


Someone Who's Feeling For Me

by ellispark



Category: Supernatural
Genre: But the case is on the side and the rest is emotional drama per usual, Canon Universe, Case Fic, Explicit Language, Love triangle that only exists in Dean and Cas's heads, M/M, Minor Violence, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Past Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester, Sam is tired of your shit Dean, Season/Series 12, Sexual Content, because they're idiots, deancaspinefest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:00:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9579500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellispark/pseuds/ellispark
Summary: Dean sees her for the first time in nearly six years in some no-name town in Idaho, and it's panic at first sight.Lisa Braeden, the one woman Dean ever actually had a shot at a real life with, back from where he buried her in his mind. And her hand is on Cas's arm like it's no big deal, like it belongs there. Cas, Dean's dorky, sweet, badass, angelic best friend, and he's just standing there next to Lisa and not moving her hand away.Dean feels the jealousy rising, and it's not directed where he expected it to be. Because it takes this exact moment for Dean to realize he's in love with his best friend. He's in love with his best friend, and Lisa is looking at Cas like he's the best thing since automatic rifles, and Dean is utterly fucked.





	

Dean sees her for the first time in nearly six years in some no-name town in Idaho, and it’s panic at first sight.  
  
It’s actually Sam who spots her first, while leaning casually against the Impala, pumping it full of $2.41-a-gallon gas. That would be too expensive for their tastes usually, but the label says zero percent ethanol, and Baby just runs better on the finer things.  
  
Sam’s distracted, talking over his shoulder to Cas about the merits of using Norse ruins in spells while Cas leans across the top of the car toward him, listening intently and interjecting with his own observations of ancient Norse culture every now and then. Dean might be slightly interested — because, hey, Vikings — but he’s pretending to studiously ignore the nerds by fumbling with the map of the area he’s spread out over Baby’s trunk. He has a reputation to uphold, after all, even if they’re the only three people around.  
  
Sam’s really getting into it, pump abandoned to gesture wildly about some runestone in Sweden, when he abruptly just stops geeking out, jaw snapping shut so loudly that Dean can hear his teeth mash together.  
  
His little brother lets out a strangled noise that sounds like a weird cross between an aborted “Ummm” and a cut off “Oh god,” and Dean looks up just in time to see Cas’s head jerk around toward him so fast he must have sprained his neck muscles.  
  
“What?” Dean asks, glancing between them both, his brother and his angel wearing identical, deer-in-the-headlights looks aimed directly at him. “What?” he repeats, louder and sharper this time, and Cas sucks in a breath while Sam just says “Ummm” again.  
  
That’s when Dean looks to the left, just behind Cas’s back to the next row of pumps. And there she is.  
  
Lisa Braeden stands next to a white Dodge Durango Dean has never seen before, because that’s not what Lisa Braeden drives — or at least it’s not what she used to drive. Her pump runs on its own as she digs around in her purse, sunglasses pushed up on top of her head, phone hooked between her ear and her shoulder.  
  
“No,” she says, and Dean shudders to hear her voice again, “I already explained this to some guy named Tom last week. I’d like to cancel the service. Yes, I have my account number...”  
  
Lisa finds whatever she was looking for in her purse, some slip of paper, and then looks up. Her eyes meet Dean’s for a second, and she gives him a small, wary smile. He recognizes it as the smile she always wore when a situation made her feel uncomfortable — a situation like three strange men staring at her without restraint.  
  
Dean shifts his eyes guiltily to the next closest target, which happens to be Cas, whose jaw gapes open slightly as he stares back at Dean.  
  
Sam clears his throat, loudly, awkwardly, and damn, he can sneak around a monster-infested warehouse like nobody’s business and still never be subtle when it really counts.  
  
“So we should probably check out that diner the cashier mentioned, get something to eat,” Sam keeps talking, and Dean stares down at the map, spread out on the trunk with the corners fluttering loose in the wind. He can’t look at Sam, definitely can’t look at Cas, 100 percent can’t let himself look at Lisa, who’s now passing by in front of the Impala on her way inside the station. She’s probably still side-eyeing them to insure she’s not about to be murdered by the most miserable bunch of bastards to ever accidentally stumble across a woman they almost got killed.  
  
Lisa’s safely inside when Dean feels something akin to his heart twisting violently in his chest, and he falls to his knees and throws up all the cheap coffee he’d chugged on the thirteen-hour drive to Idaho.

///

“I can’t do this.”  
  
Dean paces the floor of their crappy motel room, twisting so hard on a turn that he can feel the rough heel of his boot catch the burnt-orange, ‘70s shag carpet, can hear the slight ripping sound as the fabric gives way.  
  
Cas sits silent on the bed near the window, eyes glued to his hands like they hold the secret to life, or the secret as to how he and Dean can even stand to be in the same town as the woman whose memory they conspired to erase.  
  
“Well, you could always stay here,” Sam suggests, calmly, because he’s the only one in the room not guilty of drastically altering Lisa Braeden’s life. Not directly, anyway. “You can do the research this time. Cas and I can handle the legwork.”  
  
“No,” Dean stops abruptly, pointing a shaky finger at Sam. “No, we’re not gonna do that.”  
  
“Why not?” Sam has been admirably holding up his Support Poor Dean face since they bolted from the gas station, all the way through the silent ride back to the motel, but now it starts to slip into Dean Is A Stubborn Son Of A Bitch — eyebrows raised toward his hairline, incredulous, mouth pursed in a thin line.  
  
Dean doesn’t have a good response to that. The first thing that comes to his mind is, “I think we just need to leave because it makes me feel bad to see her,” but that sounds like something a ten-year-old would say. And then Sam will say, “Dean, people are dying.” And Dean will feel guilty and selfish, and Cas will still be silently alternating between looking at his hands and then back at the brothers with that wide, fearful gaze that indicates his own pure panic.  
  
Dean knows them all so well he maps out that line of conversation in his head within the space of about two seconds.  
  
So what comes out instead is, “Cas hasn’t hunted with us since Lucifer, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to send you two out alone.”  
  
_Oh yes,_ Dean thinks. _Because that is the perfect response, clearly._  
  
“Dean —” Sam starts, but Cas cuts him off.  
  
“I’m perfectly capable of hunting, Dean,” Cas says, and the words sound clipped and icy, which perfectly matches the stony look on his face. He glares at Dean, pining him in place with just his eyes in the way only Cas seems able to do. “I’ve been tracking down Lucifer without either of you for weeks...”  
  
“Yeah, and Crowley almost died on that fun little adventure, which is why you’re with us now,” Dean snaps back, because he’s always been a glutton for shoving a sword through his own heart when it comes to Cas and Cas-related interactions. “So forgive me for not wanting you to jump right back into the fire with my brother.”  
  
Sometimes when conversations between Dean and Cas get really heated, and they start communicating with each other solely through steadily-held glares, it seems like Sam simply ceases to exist. He usually either quietly exits the room, or, when that’s impossible, remains so still that it feels like he isn’t actually there.  
  
This, unfortunately for Dean, is not one of those times.  
  
“Dean, what the hell?” Sam says, clearly both angry and confused. Dean knows immediately he’s really done a bang-up job this time, thoroughly pissing off both of them. Sam and Cas are a certified nightmare when they decide to tag-team him. “For one thing, I can take care of myself, in case you’ve managed to forget that in the space of the what, the one week since we last had this exact conversation? And for another, Cas has always looked out for both of us. I trust him with my life, and I don’t really give a damn if you don’t...” Sam pauses here, taking a deep breath to either calm himself down or to rejuvenate before he continues ranting. “But I know you do, so again, what the hell?”  
  
Dean picks a spot of peeling wood-grain paneling on the back wall between the beds that suddenly he just can’t take his eyes off of, like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen in a motel room (It’s not. Dean’s seen a lot of things in motel rooms. _A lot of things_ ). He remains silent, because he knows what’s next.  
  
Cas is what’s next, but Cas always takes his time to make his arguments, finding the best way to pick Dean apart.  
  
“Dean.” That deep voice holds the threat of a storm. Dean usually feels way better about himself when Cas says his name, but not this time. “If you think I’m an inadequate partner for your brother, then you should at least afford me the courtesy of saying it in as many words.”  
  
Oddly, hearing Cas ask if Dean thinks he isn’t a good partner for Sam makes Dean’s heart sort of twist again the way it had after he saw Lisa, makes him want to say, “You’re my partner, not his.” But that’s stupid, so clearly he won’t say that.  
  
He flicks his eyes from the wood paneling straight to Cas’s narrowed, blue gaze.  
  
“No, I, shit...” Cas doesn’t try to save Dean from his stumbling, just sitting there, stock-still. The only movement Dean can see is in Cas’s hands, twisting just slightly in the ugly brown duvet.  
  
Dean should tell the truth here, say what they all already know. That this has nothing to do with Sam or Cas (well, maybe he does worry about both of them near constantly, but he has been better at taking a step back since the whole Darkness-averted-apocalypse-and-now-Mom’s-back thing). He should tell them that this is all about him and this chasm of a long ago, false life he thought he’d buried successfully that is now turning into a sinkhole that’s threatening to swallow him whole. All because he saw his ex-girlfriend for like five seconds at a gas station.  
  
Instead Dean says, “Cas, I mean, yeah I would be worried about Sam, but I always worry about Sam.” Here Dean takes a chance and glances at his brother, but Sam holds his arms tightly across his chest, eyebrows still raised and clearly unwilling to help Dean dig himself out of this hole. “I just... you’ve been through a lot here recently, and I think you should, uh, take it easy. Not go straight into being somebody’s only backup. Besides, you were really tangled up in this Lisa mess, too, and it didn’t end so well for you last time, you know?”  
  
The question dangles awkwardly in the air between them, and Dean isn’t sure if he meant it to be rhetorical or not, but now it seems all-important that Cas respond, say something, say he understands Dean even when Dean’s stumbling through this explanation like an emotionally-repressed idiot.  
  
But Cas doesn’t say anything. He sits there on that ugly brown bed, chest heaving slightly like he’s about to face down a bunch of demons instead of Dean. That hurts. Dean hates that deep frown on Cas’s face, wants to walk over to him and put his thumb on the lines drawn between Cas’s brows, erase them.  
  
Instead Dean says nothing, does nothing but watch as Cas stands up and walks out the door, slamming it behind him so hard the weird painting of a cactus on the wall shakes.  
  
“Wow,” Sam says sarcastically, all trace of Support Poor Dean completely gone from his voice. “You really couldn’t have handled that any better.”

///

Cas walks.  
  
He doesn’t have any set destination in mind. They arrived into town too late to check in with the sheriff or the medical examiner, and the local library closed hours ago. He can’t do anything to help move this case along unless he turns back to their motel room, helps Sam sort through Internet lore using the somewhat-less-than-stable wifi.  
  
That’s what he should be doing. He shouldn’t let Dean’s comments get to him. Cas knows rationally that Dean has shifted his issues with Lisa onto him because Dean doesn’t know how to deal with his own memories of her or his own deeply buried desires for something even slightly resembling a normal life, a normal relationship. Dean clearly is at loss for how to deal with the repressed history brought back to the surface today.  
  
Lisa was there, right in front of them, breathing and real, and Dean loved her once.  
  
Then Cas let her get hurt, and then he erased her memories and her son’s memories. And then he opened Purgatory, let loose the Leviathan, and killed his brothers and sisters. So maybe he does deserve to be told to sit this one out.  
  
Maybe Cas deserves to be reminded of the one person Dean actually tried to build a life with. He deserves to be reminded that that person certainly wasn’t himself.  
  
Seeing Lisa again hit them both hard, for very different reasons.  
  
Cas pauses at the street corner and looks back over his shoulder at the motel. The door to their room remains closed, the Impala sitting snug in her tight spot between two much less well-cared-for cars. Dean isn’t coming after him to apologize. _Of course not,_ Cas thinks. Dean rarely apologizes.  
  
The streets of the small town emptied of cars as the sun went down, and the storefront windows shuttered at exactly five p.m. Cas can’t remember the name of the place they’re in, but it reminds him of Rexford. A strangely vindictive part of him wants to ask Dean to take him back there. It’s so close. Only an hour or so drive away. Maybe he’ll ask Dean to leave him there at the Gas-N-Sip again, try to get his old job back, pretend to be human while he waits for his meager grace to heal. Just to see how Dean would react.  
  
The worst thing about this destructive little fantasy is that Cas thinks Dean actually might let him go.  
  
At that thought, he begins walking forward again, crossing the street and starting to put some distance between himself and the Winchesters. That’s what he does, after all — he moves away from them when he’s upset or in trouble, so they won’t see him struggle, all the while wishing that for once they’d ask him to stay in one place, with them. That Dean would ask Cas to stay with him.  
  
It’s counterproductive, maybe, but it’s the dance they’ve been trapped in for years. Dean will only ever tell Cas he needs him in the barest of words and gestures, and Cas will always come back, but never in time to satisfy Dean.  
  
He’ll go back to the motel, too, eventually. He’ll turn back the scratchy sheets and crawl into bed alone to attempt to rest while his grace repairs itself, he’ll listen to Sam snore from across the room, he’ll watch Dean shuffle on the floor, pretending like he’s comfortable and asleep.  
  
But right now Cas walks, moving to the side of the road when the sidewalk ends, barely registering the black windows of all the houses and businesses. His phone rings in his pocket and he ignores it for a while, finally pulling it out on the fourth call.  
  
It’s Dean.  
  
Cas’s finger hovers over the accept button, something in his chest loosening at the sight of Dean’s face on the screen. He took that picture when Dean was in a good mood, explaining to Cas why, in his personal opinion, no science fiction hero could surpass Han Solo. In the photo Dean’s eyes are crinkled, he’s smiling and gesturing with one hand held out like a gun (or a blaster. That, Cas now knows, is what guns are called in the Star Wars film franchise). He was so happy he didn’t even tease Cas about taking the picture, just sort of smiling fondly when he saw it in a way that made Cas wish he had the camera ready to capture Dean’s face again.  
  
It’s actually the memory of that happiness that pushes Cas to reject the call. They’re both upset, and they’ll go on to say more upsetting things to each other if they talk right now. Cas doesn’t want to talk about Lisa, or past loves and betrayal, while he’s this angry. Not that they would actually discuss those things in an open way anyway, but he doesn’t want to talk around them, either.  
  
He keeps looking at his phone after the screen switches back to its normal blue background. Three missed calls from Dean and one from Sam. Sam sent a text that says, “Dean is an idiot. He feels bad, though, Cas. Just so you know.”  
  
Dean also sent two texts.  
  
“Look dude I didn’t mean to bring that shit up I just want you to be ok and you know I’ve been worried about you since... you know”  
  
“This one is on me not you”  
  
It’s as much of an apology as Cas is likely to get, he knows. He turns back toward the motel, which he can just barely see in the distance. It’s totally dark now, and the streetlights are placed sporadically along the road, providing little light. With his grace so diminished, Cas’s night vision is nowhere near what it used to be. He knows he should go back.  
  
He does wish he could talk to someone, though. Explain that seeing Lisa immediately brought to mind two years of heavenly warfare, the worst mistake of his life, the look in Dean’s eyes when he said, “I wish this changed anything.”  
  
Maybe he could say all that to Sam. But he can’t just tell Sam that seeing her also reminded him that Dean loved Lisa and he loved Ben, that Dean might have even grown to be truly happy with the Braedens eventually, and that reminder makes Cas’s heart ache and his blood boil with jealousy. Which he knows is both irrational and selfish, but he feels it nonetheless.  
  
He shouldn’t feel it, though. He still has his grace, wrecked as it is. He’s still an angel, albeit a broken one. Cas shouldn’t feel anything this much, but of course, that’s never stopped him before.  
  
He stands in the street, just close enough to the edge to avoid passing vehicles, and looks at his contacts list. He can’t talk to the Winchester brothers, and Mary Winchester is still an unknown quantity to him, an enigma who smiles warmly at her sons but looks at Cas with a strangely appraising gaze. Cas can’t tell this woman he barely knows that he’s equal parts in love and infuriated with her eldest son, because he can barely acknowledge the former fact to himself. He could call her under the guise of requesting help on the case that brought them here, something Dean is sure is “obviously lazy vamps,” and then explain that he and Dean are fighting in the vaguest of terms. But Mary’s on a vacation of sorts, staying with a physic friend of the family in Lawrence, and Cas can’t bring himself to disturb her with such flimsy misdirection.  
  
That only leaves three more contacts. First there’s Crowley, whose number Cas still pretends not to have saved (it’s 666, so it’s not hard to remember, but Cas enjoys acting like he doesn’t know it and watching Crowley’s face turn red in anger). Of course Cas can’t call the demon to talk about this. Just thinking about Crowley makes the blood pressure in his body rise to a level that Cas can feel even with his weakened grace. It doesn’t matter if they’re working together to try and find Lucifer now, Crowley is the precipice for the betrayal that created the “Lisa mess,” as Dean called it, and Cas will be damned before he asks him for help fixing this particular problem.  
  
Then there’s Claire, and she’s been short with him for weeks. He knows she’s angry that he ignored her calls and texts for months, but Cas hasn’t found a way to tell her that Lucifer caused the lack of communication. He wants Claire to open up to him again, but he worries that telling her he let the devil possess the body that looks exactly like her father’s is a sure way for her to shut down contact between them entirely.  
  
It’s another thing he needs to fix, another item on the list Cas is building in his head — mend his relationship with Claire, find and destroy Lucifer, win over Mary Winchester, move past the violent flashbacks that still sometimes drive him to his knees, solve the case in front of them right now, have a real conversation with Dean about... everything.  
  
He feels like he’ll never get through it.  
  
The last number makes him ache, causes an unprecedented wetness to rise in his eyes. It’s Hannah’s, from the phone he made her purchase when they were traveling together, rounding up the rogue angels. That was two years ago, now. She’s been dead for one of those years.  
  
Cas really doesn't have any family left.  
  
He closes his eyes against the swiftly encroaching panic and pockets the phone, beginning to walk back. He’ll keep his thoughts to himself, as usual.

///

Cas was out for less than an hour the night before, but to Dean it felt like an eternity.  
  
“Why do you think he’s not responding to us?” Dean had asked Sam. “Do you think he’s okay? What if he ran into the vamp?”  
  
Sam had rolled his eyes.  
  
“He did respond to me. He said, and I quote, ‘I just need a bit of time alone.’ Also, Dean, I’m not convinced that this is a vampire case...”  
  
The Sam had droned on for at least ten minutes about other possible monsters that could be responsible for the recent string of strange deaths, and Dean had tuned him out completely in favor of worrying further and feeling hurt that Cas chose to ignore his apology text.  
  
The good news, if it could be called that, is that while Dean’s energy was devoted to worrying about Cas, he could mostly keep from thinking, _Lisa, Lisa is here, what if Ben is here too, what if they’re in danger, what if I screwed up their minds when I made Cas erase their memories_ and other variations.  
  
When Cas returned, he’d only grumpily mumbled “Goodnight,” more to Sam than to Dean, and dropped into bed without even changing clothes. Dean couldn’t tell if this was one of those nights when Cas actually needed the rest — he’d explained before, in a very detached, worrying tone of voice, that his grace was damaged from Lucifer’s possession and he might be in need of “human nourishment and restoration” for a while — or if he was just still pissed at Dean and using that as an excuse to ignore him. It was only 9:30, but Sam also decided to turn in at that point because he’s secretly a 70-year-old man, leaving Dean to lay on the floor and guiltily stare at the stained ceiling until he could fall into a fitful sleep.  
  
In the morning they ate breakfast at a local greasy spoon, and Cas sat on Dean’s side of the booth and stole pieces of bacon off his plate. Dean had felt a weight come off his chest until Sam said, “Okay, so this morning before you guys woke up I called any hunter I could think of in the area to see if they’d take this case. No dice.”  
  
Dean swallowed a lump of pancake like it was a rock. He hadn’t asked, but he’d assumed Sam would get them out of this one. After Cas left the night before Sam had said, “Dean, we’ll figure something else out.” And Dean took that to mean that after breakfast they’d be on the road again, going back home to check in on Mom and Missouri, with some less-involved hunter on the way to finish this case.  
  
Of course he’d have no such luck.  
  
Which led to now, and Dean looking over a cluttered desk at the local sheriff, a petite woman who reminds Dean so much of Farrah Fawcett circa Charlie’s Angels, feathery curls and all, it’s hard for him not to call her Jill Munroe. If it was maybe three or four years ago Dean would be laying on the charm as thick as possible, flirting with her with a very clear goal in mind — them both in bed, not sleeping at all.  
  
As it is, Dean thinks of Lisa walking past him, unrecognizing, and he stops that train of thought just short of the station. But honestly, mostly he thinks of Cas for some reason, sitting next to him right now all suited up again, and he thinks of Cas always standing by him, deserving much better than to be stuck with Dean and all of his stupid, whiplashing moods.  
  
He doesn’t want to try and sleep with her. He doesn’t feel like he needs to, not with Cas here. And that’s another feeling that will get shoved into the back of his mind to never be examined, stored away in the dusty filing cabinet marked “Things Dean Won’t Think About.” It’s a huge filing cabinet. Overflowing, really.  
  
Sheriff Munroe, errr Sheriff Dawes, leans back in her desk chair and clears her throat, bringing Dean back to reality. She evaluates Dean and Cas with a look that screams suspicion. It’s maybe a good thing Dean doesn’t want to sleep with her, because she’s clearly not buying anything he’s selling anyway.  
  
“Why’d you say the feds are interested in this case again?” Dawes asks, with a slight drawl that definitely doesn’t come from growing up in Idaho. Texas, if Dean had to guess.  
  
“You did have a case that was similar to the two recent deaths eight years ago, correct?” Cas asks in return, and Dean feels strangely proud that Cas no longer blurts out shit like, “We suspect a supernatural being is killing your citizens.”  
  
“Yes,” Dawes says, drawing out the word into multiple syllables. “But look, Agents, that was clearly a murder. And the man who killed Lacey Parks is in prison. These are just accidents. Terrible accidents, but accidents all the same.”  
  
Dean opens his mouth to respond, but Cas beats him to it.  
  
“Sheriff, these victims’ heads were nearly severed from their bodies. Most of their blood was drained. That doesn’t seem very ‘accidental’ to me.”  
  
Cas does the air quotes and everything, and Dean has to resist reaching over to knock his hands down. Dean can appreciate Cas’s dry personality, but he knows all Dawes sees is an uppity federal agent passive aggressively mocking her and her department.  
  
Indeed, Dawes’ blue eyes narrow, and she taps the case files on her desk with her pointer finger.  
  
“Melanie Cross was killed in a car accident. Near decapitation caused by the impact, according to the M.E. It took days to find her and her car, it went so far off the road. It’s not surprising she lost quite a bit of blood in that time.” She shifts Melanie’s file to get to the next one. “Brock Anderson got too close to the wheel at the old water mill — again, it’s obvious what happened to him. And the blood likely drained away down the river before we found him.”  
  
“But blood congeals after death, it’s not...”  
  
“Agent Stein,” Dean interrupts Cas before the sheriff can ask them both to leave. “I think we’ve got what we need.” Dean gives Dawes his most charming smile, to which she only blearily blinks in return, clearly unimpressed. “Sheriff Dawes, if we could please get copies of those files? You know, just to be sure to dot our I’s and cross our T’s. Bureau gets real pushy about double checking every little lead.” He smiles again. Again, Dawes is impassive, but she does tell them to ask for the copies from the secretary at the front desk.  
  
She nods at them as they walk out, says “Agent Harry, Agent Stein” in a voice that makes it clear she doesn’t want to see them in her office again.  
  
“Well, that went well,” Dean says as he gets into the Impala, pulling his tie loose.  
  
He looks over at Cas, wearing his familiar trench coat and fiddling with his fake FBI badge in the passenger seat. Dean made him pose for a new headshot recently. Cas is just starting to look too different from Jimmy Novak in the license photo Dean lifted for his first badge a long seven years ago. He looks more worn. Older, even though he shouldn’t be.  
  
“What is your definition of ‘well?’” Cas asks, snapping the badge shut, eyes narrowing into his What Are You Talking About squint.  
  
“She hates us, Cas,” Dean says, maneuvering the Impala out onto the road toward the next town over, where Sam is meeting with the coroner at the closest hospital. “But at least we got these.” He holds up the files. “Accidents, my ass. This is one vicious bloodsucker, man. I’m telling you, it’s a vamp. Too greedy for blood to just stick straws in it like the rest of them. Has to nearly get the head off it wants it so bad.”  
  
“And it will likely kill again soon,” Cas says, totally solemn.  
  
“Yeah dude, that’s why we’re here.” They drive in silence for a few moments, before Dean, without his brain fully giving his mouth permission, says “Hey, by the way, how are you doing with the whole, uh, seeing Lisa thing?”  
  
He glances sideways to see Cas squinting at him again. This time it’s the I Cannot Believe You’re Asking Me This squint.  
  
“Dean, are you sure you’re not the one who’s upset by seeing her? You are the one who cohabited with her for a considerable amount of time, and I know you considered yourself to be like a father to Ben.”  
  
Jesus, sometimes Dean hates how blunt Cas is.  
  
“I’m fine,” he says, and his voices cracks in a way that is very much not fine. “Obviously I was shocked.” Right, because he threw up right after seeing her. “But now that I’ve thought about it, it’s no reason not to man up and finish this case. I mean, she doesn’t remember me. Ben doesn’t remember me. Hell, she might not even live here. Might’ve been just stopping for gas on her way through to somewhere better.” That was what Sam had guessed after they first saw her. “I’ve got no reason to be upset. That was six years ago. I’m over it. It doesn’t matter. I’m over it, it’s done, I’m fine.”  
  
“You’re rambling,” Cas says.  
  
“Well, we’re not gonna see her again so it doesn’t matter,” Dean repeats, like saying it often enough might make it true. “Just wanted to be sure you were okay with it, ‘cause you looked kind of panicked when you saw her. You did wipe their memories and all.”  
  
“Because you asked me to,” Cas reminds him, voice edging into that dangerous territory again.  
  
“Right, yeah, I know. Like I said, that’s on me.”  
  
“I didn’t know that was what you were referring to in the message,” Cas says quietly. Dean chances a glance at his friend, sees that Cas is now staring out the window at the trees rushing by. “You did ask it of me, but I did it without question. It was wrong, and I know that now. So yes, I do feel guilt.”  
  
Dean’s turned his eyes back to the road, but he can always feel when Cas is looking at him, and he’s definitely looking now.  
  
“I feel far worse guilt for ever dragging the Braedens, or you, into my own mess,” Cas continues. Dean can hear him swallow hard, but he can’t look at him. “You were only ever trying to protect them, Dean. It might have been the wrong decision, but you made it for the right reasons. I’m not so sure I can justify my actions from that year in the same way.”  
  
It will never not punch Dean in the gut to hear Cas try to validate even his worst moments, and suddenly Dean is sure that not only does he not carry any anger whatsoever toward Cas for that whole Purgatory-opening mess anymore, but he also knows he has to make sure Cas understands that. That Dean knows better about a lot of things now, and one of those things is that he’s aware that Cas has always had a good heart, even when he fucks up.  
  
“You were trying to protect me,” Dean says, and he wasn’t even fully certain that statement was true until it came out of his mouth and sounded completely right. “Wrong decision, right reasons, same old song and dance.” He looks over at Cas now, just for a second, because the warmth and hope in Cas’s blue eyes is too much to bear for long, like looking directly at the sun. “It was all forgiven, a long, long time ago... And I, uh, I hope you can forgive me, too....” Dean pauses, swallows. “For not always being a great friend to you... recently... during my own super bad decision making times.”  
  
“Always, Dean,” Cas says, and Dean feels a hand press down on his arm, squeezing lightly, just once, before Cas moves it away again.

///

Cas sees Lisa again that evening, when he’s alone at the motel.  
  
Dean and Sam drove off an hour earlier, headed out to the “accident” sites to scope out any potential clues. Sam wanted to split up — he would take the mill, he said, and Dean could go further up the river to the spot in the woods where Melanie Cross’s car was found. Sam suggested bringing Cas, too, and dropping him off at the site where hikers stumbled across Lacey Park’s body eight years earlier.  
  
Dean nixed all of that plan.  
  
“We’re not splitting up,” he'd said, jaw twitching. “Not when we don’t know how many of these fuckers we’re dealing with.”  
  
Sam didn’t try to argue, and Cas thinks that the youngest Winchester is well aware how jumpy Dean has felt about any of them splitting up on a job since Cas and Lucifer, and since Sam and that whole fiasco with the British Men of Letters.  
  
“We’re better together,” Dean said with finality, and that was that.  
  
Cas chose to stay behind and look up lore, a decision the brothers accepted without argument. Really, though, he plans to do a bit of research and then maybe catch a quick episode of _Stranger Things_ on Netflix. He’s finding himself feeling rather attached to Eleven — a being with impossible power, controlled by sinister authority figures all her life, now loose in a world she never learned about properly, becoming friends with a spunky group of normal humans while fighting against those she once considered family. It’s not difficult to see the parallels there.  
  
He’s just started episode six when his stomach begins to rumble insistently. It’s not a feeling Cas is used to, nor is it one he particularly enjoys. Being trapped somewhere between an angel and a human sometimes seems far more exhausting than just simply being one or the other. When he’s like this it’s not always easy to tell what his vessel — his body — needs.  
  
Dragging himself away from Sam’s laptop, Cas shoves his feet into Dean’s dress shoes, just because they’re closer to the bed than his are. He changed out of his suit and trench coat earlier — being partly human means needing to do laundry — and his pajama pants and plain t-shirt definitely don’t match the shoes, but oh well. He just needs to get to the vending machine outside. Sam wouldn’t approve if he were here, but Dean would probably ask Cas to bring back a candy bar for him. Cas decides to go ahead and get him one anyway, so Dean can eat it when he gets back. He smiles to himself, thinking, _That will make Dean happy._  
  
Maybe it will make Dean happy enough that he’ll smile, touch Cas on the shoulder. Cas needs that touch, the most he ever seems to get from Dean. He wants it in a way he knows he probably shouldn’t.  
  
So he crosses the parking lot briskly, headed to the machine on the wall of the motel office. He punches in the numbers for a package of pretzels for himself, then gets a Snickers for Dean. When he spots the vegetable chips he sort of shrugs to himself and goes ahead and buys a package for Sam, just so he won’t feel left out.  
  
It’s when Cas turns back toward the room that he spots her.  
  
Lisa Braeden is perched on top of a picnic table in a little grassy area next to the motel, on the side closest to their room. Her legs are crossed and she’s leaning back on her hands. She’s staring at him.  
  
He feels a little stupid in his pajamas and Dean’s dress shoes, one size too big for his feet, holding an armful of vending machine snacks. Cas wants to bolt back to the room, or really, he wants to fly, make his problems fall away with a flap of his wings. But he can’t do that anymore.  
  
Cas’s wings are ruined. He has to face everything head on now. Just like a real boy, as Dean would say.  
  
The walk back across the parking lot feels like it’s taking much longer than it should, and Cas is studiously keeping his eyes glued to their room door when he hears her call out to him.  
  
“Hey,” she says, and although he never really knew her, Cas remembers her voice. “You’re one of those guys from the gas station.”  
  
Or Cas is the guy, the angel, who watched over her home for a year. Watched her cook meals with Dean, laugh with Ben, do little dances around the kitchen when she thought no one was watching. It feels like a terrible, terrible invasion of privacy now, but at the time Cas had thought nothing of keeping guard over the Braeden household when he could get away from the war in Heaven. He only thought of making sure Dean was still safe, still living the life Sam instructed him to live.  
  
Lisa, of course, knows nothing of that. She knows nothing of Dean, thanks to Cas.  
  
He turns to face her slowly. Her eyebrows are raised, clearly waiting for a response.  
  
“I’m...sorry?” Cas croaks out, slightly horrified at how guilty he sounds to his own ears.  
  
Lisa doesn’t move except to uncross her legs and lean toward him.  
  
“I’ve seen you twice now,” she says, still speaking loudly to be heard over the twenty feet that separate them. “At the gas station? You were with two other guys. You all were staring at me like you’d seen a ghost.” She gestures toward him with one hand. He can see from here that her nails are painted a deep navy color. “You’re doing the same thing, right now.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, a little more steady, ready to get back inside and away from this.  
  
“Are you following me?” Lisa asks, and her voice is rising slightly, accusatory. “I will call the cops.”  
  
Now Cas is confused. There’s so little reason for her to be here, sitting on a picnic bench adjacent to their motel, that part of him almost wonders if _she_ hasn’t been following _them._  
  
“Excuse me?” he asks.  
  
“Well, I see three strange men watching me at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, Idaho, and now at least one of them is staying at the same motel as I am,” Lisa says. “So, I might call that a little suspicious.”  
  
“No, no, I...” Cas tries to think of how to answer, how to get her to leave him alone, and comes up blank. “You just look like someone we knew.”  
  
She seems taken aback by this, shrinking away from him a bit in confusion. No longer so confrontational, Lisa looks kind of afraid. Cas immediately wants to ease that fear.  
  
“I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to frighten you. We’re federal agents. We’re in town investigating some suspicious deaths,” Cas says, a practiced lie that feels even worse to tell to this woman. Her whole life from the point he entered it is built upon a lie. “I would show you my badge, but...” He gestures with his armful of snacks toward himself, dressed for sleep.  
  
Lisa bites her lip and looks him over. Cas waits for her to pass judgment.  
  
“Federal agents?” she asks, but it doesn’t seem like a question that needs confirmation. “Are you here about that kid at the mill? I read about that in a newspaper the cleaning lady left in my room. Kind of a crazy deal.”  
  
Cas nods.  
  
“Oh god, I don’t remind you guys of some victim, do I?”  
  
The answer to that slightly panicked question is actually a yes, Lisa does remind Cas of a victim, she _is_ one of his victims, but aloud he says, “Oh, no... You look like a good friend of mine.”  
  
Which might be half true. Now that he’s moved closer to her, Cas can see she’s cut her hair so it falls just to her shoulders, loose and dark and slightly curly. Her eyes are big and kind, brown, not blue, but it hits him that something about her reminds him of Hannah. For once, the thought of the other angel doesn’t assault him with memories of her violent death.  
  
Lisa nods at him.  
  
“Oh,” she says, relaxing. “Nice shoes, by the way, Agent...?”  
  
“Stein. Agent Stein.” Cas has somehow migrated to stand right in front of her. “And these actually belong to my partner. He’s unaware they’re missing.”  
  
Lisa is smiling at him now, a much kinder smile than she gave them at the gas station the day before. “You have a first name, Agent?”  
  
“Cas,” he says, because Sam and Dean usually let him use his real name even as a cover, and he immediately wonders if it’s a name she’s heard before. He wonders if Dean ever mentioned him back then, during his time with the Braedens in Cicero. Probably not, he decides.  
  
“Cas Stein.” She’s trying the name out, a thoughtful look on her face. “Is Cas short for anything?”  
  
_Just Castiel, angel of the Lord, warrior of God, guardian of the Righteous Man. Heaven’s greatest disappointment._  
  
“No, it’s just Cas.”  
  
“Well Agent Just Cas Stein,” Lisa says, and she gestures for him to sit on the bench, next to where she’s propped her feet. Without really thinking he does, settling his assorted snacks on his lap. “I’m Lisa Braeden,” she says, and he resists saying “I know that.” She continues, “And I do have a bit of serious question for you.”  
  
She’s asked him a lot of questions so far, and all of them have felt rather serious to Cas, though she appears more relaxed now that she doesn’t think he’s stalking her.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I’m actually here because my kid is on a camping trip nearby.” Cas feels a terrible drop in his gut, one not caused by hunger, at the mention of Ben. “We have a wedding to get to this weekend in California, so I drove up to pick him up. Got a room at the nicest place in town.” She laughs at that. Cas notes that she has a nice laugh. “I’m early. I don’t need to go get him for a couple of days. I was just going to take some me-time, maybe do some hiking, but when I saw that article about the kid...” Her voice drifts off.  
  
“You’re worried about your son?”  
  
Lisa nods slightly, and her hands twist in her lap.  
  
“Ben. His name is Ben. Anyway, I just wondered if, in your professional opinion, maybe I should go ahead and go get him? Just in case there is someone out there in the woods or something... Although he’ll probably hate me for it. He’s seventeen, and I’m just so embarrassing to him.”  
  
Lisa smiles, but it looks a little sad. Parents feel bittersweet about their children growing up, Cas has come to understand. He even feels that way about Claire, though he knows he probably shouldn’t. She’s not his daughter. But he tries to think about how he would feel if she was the one out there on a camping trip with her friends while vampires or some other monster roamed the area. He would want her safe with him.  
  
Not that Claire would even be talking to him, not now...  
  
“Do you know where exactly he’s camping?” Cas asks, trying to refocus on Lisa.  
  
“Yes, it’s...” She pauses, clearly considering whether to tell this stranger where her son is or not. “About twenty miles from here.”  
  
Cas shrugs. “The deaths we’re investigating both happened right on the border of town next to the river. Not near any campgrounds. And, if it makes you feel any better, local law enforcement believe them to be unrelated accidents.”  
  
“But you’re here.”  
  
Lisa is a smart woman, and she has more reason to be worried than she knows. But Cas knows exactly what’s out there. He’s seen what terrors creatures of the dark have wreaked upon this woman’s life and the life of her son. He indirectly caused some of her worst nightmares to come true. How can he blithely reassure her now that nothing waits to find Ben at night?  
  
“Do you have a child, Cas?” she asks before he can work out a response. She must see something in his face, for her voice wavers, soft and a little unsteady. “I don’t mean to pry, just, I saw your face when I said Ben is embarrassed by me. It looked like you understood.”  
  
He should say no, tell her not to worry about Ben, tell her goodnight and walk away. Cas can’t imagine what Dean would think, if he pulled up now in the Impala, to see Cas looking up at Lisa like he has any right to speak to her.  
  
Instead he says, “No, but I do have a teenage niece I care for very much. She sometimes hates me.”  
  
Cas imagines Dean is here again now, only this time Dean is slapping his hand against his forehead and saying, “Niece? Really, Cas? You Jimmy’s twin now?”  
  
But Lisa is laughing. “All kids are like that.”  
  
It does give Cas a sense of relief. He’s always been stumbling through the dark without a flashlight when it comes to Claire, never sure whether she wants him around or not, whether she’s forgiven him or still carries that deep rage toward him for her father’s death. Sam and Dean know nothing about children, despite having been human children at one time. It’s nice to hear someone who might understand affirm his belief that maybe teenagers can just be terrible in general.  
  
“How old is she?” Lisa asks.  
  
“She’s nineteen. Nearly an adult. I’d like her to go to college, but she keeps talking about working right away.” About hunting right away.  
  
“Ben is only going because I practically forced the applications down his throat. He might resent that, actually. But when we toured Ohio State...” She shrugs with one shoulder. “He fell in love.”  
  
Cas feels a genuine smile coming on. Ben is going to a good school, and he’s happy about it. Not every life Cas has touched comes out ruined.  
  
“Good for him,” he says, completely earnest.  
  
“Yeah.” Lisa smiles absently, looking off in the distance toward the road. “I’m very proud.”  
  
“As you should be.”  
  
His hunger is getting the better of him now. Cas pulls at his pretzel bag and it opens with a satisfying _pop._ He offers it to Lisa without thinking, and she pulls two pretzels out slowly, her eyes slightly narrowed in a way that reminds Cas of Hannah, too. He doesn’t know why.  
  
“Thank you,” Lisa says after a beat of silence. He smiles back at her, surprised at how easy the expression comes. It doesn’t hurt, doesn’t feel fake. She’s kind and she loves her child and she made fun of his oversized dress shoes and Cas likes her, enough to briefly forget the jealousy and the guilt his mind has warred between since seeing her for the first time the evening before.  
  
“So,” she says, taking a small bite out of one of the pretzels, “if your niece was here, would you be worried about her?”  
  
“Yes. Irrationally, but yes.” It’s the truth. He owes her that much.  
  
“Maybe I should go get Ben, then. But god, I feel like he’d never forgive me if I ended his fun over nothing. He’s been talking about this trip for months.”  
  
Cas hands over the bag without comment so she can take out a few more pretzels.  
  
“My honest opinion is that even if there’s a... person... committing these acts, your son is far enough away from the hunting grounds so as to not be in any danger.” That’s also true. If there’s a monster doing this, it’s staying fairly close to the town borders. “But it’s ultimately your decision.”  
  
Lisa nods thoughtfully. Then she suddenly gestures toward the pile of junk food still in his lap, like she needs to change the subject. “Please tell me that isn’t your dinner.”  
  
_What a motherly thing to ask,_ Cas thinks. He recalls Mary Winchester, freshly back from the dead, standing in the bunker kitchen and scolding Dean for sneaking past her room to eat leftover pie after midnight. Then she’d turned to Cas and said, “And you, you just let him treat his body like a vending machine?” Cas tried to explain he’d actually rebuilt Dean’s body after hell and he respected it quite a lot, but Dean seemed very embarrassed by that particular anecdote and shut it down quickly.  
  
To Lisa he says, somewhat defensively, “It’s not all for me. My partners should be back soon. I bought the other things for them.”  
  
“So that’s the governmental feeding plan that has you all looking like demi-gods? Junk food?”  
  
Her tone is light, teasing. Cas doesn’t know what to make of it, what to do with it.  
  
“Um...”  
  
“Listen Agent... Cas, I haven’t eaten yet.” She hops down from the table and stands up, brushes her hands down the sides of her jeans. “Maybe you’d like to go to dinner with me?”  
  
He blinks at her in shock, and Lisa seems to reevaluate the question.  
  
“I do have slightly selfish reasons for asking,” she says hurriedly. “I thought maybe you could tell me more about this case, and I could decide whether I should be worried out of my mind or not. I know you can’t tell me everything, but...”  
  
Cas wants to say both no and yes. Yes because he would like to put her mind at ease, would like to help Lisa in any small way he can. She deserves that from him. And no because how dare he presume to try and offer this woman any advice or even friendship, and what if that invitation was a flirtation... _Oh, fuck,_ he thinks, and Cas rarely swears even in his head. _Was that a flirtation?_  
  
But she’s looking at him with those wide, brown eyes, and he can clearly see her concern. All Cas knows about Lisa Braeden is filtered through the year he caught glimpses of her life from the shadows and through the few times Dean has mentioned her in the years since (usually when he’s had too much to drink and is bemoaning the people he’s lost in list form. Cas always makes the list more than once). If he’s gathered one constant from all these flashes of a life, it’s that Lisa is a devoted mother who loves her son more than anything.  
  
Cas never had a mother. Never had a parent. Not really. God was a bum dad if he’s ever heard of one. After watching Mary reunite with her boys, hearing Lisa talk about Ben, he feels like he’s missing something crucial.  
  
All of this is almost enough to make him say yes.  
  
Then bright headlights flashing across the parking lot and right into their faces blind them. Cas and Lisa both blink, raising their hands to block the glare.  
  
“Oh,” Lisa says, and she sounds almost disappointed. “Looks like your partners are back.”

///

They find exactly zilch at the first two sites.  
  
Of course, that’s to be expected, especially from the grove just off the river where hikers discovered Lacey Parks’ mutilated body, throat slit so deep her head was barely hanging on to her neck. Eight years is too long of a time for most evidence to survive the elements, and even though Sam and Dean carefully comb through all the bushes for a good 50-yard radius, they find nothing but animal droppings and one pretty cool black feather.  
  
“You think Cas’d like this?” Dean asks Sam, twirling the feather between two fingers.  
  
Sam gives Dean a pretty clear bitch face.  
  
“Why, ‘cause he’s an angel? Dean, I think now might not be the time to bring that up.”  
  
Dean feels both chastised and confused — it’s not like Cas is super shy about throwing around “I’m an angel of the Lord” — but he figures maybe Sam and Cas have discussed Cas’s fading grace without him around. It shouldn’t hurt Dean’s feelings the way it does, because Dean’s always known he’s not the easiest person to talk to, but he’s supposed to be Cas’s best friend. Not Sam.  
  
He pockets the feather anyway.  
  
The next spot — where Melanie Cross’s car took a swan dive off a steep embankment and landed on its side on the riverbank, sandwiched between two trees next to the water — is more of the same. The local cops cleared the wreckage out five months ago, a few days after Melanie’s crash. It makes Dean shiver, thinking of the poor girl, trapped in her car, still alive, while a monster stalked her in the dark. She’d have been totally defenseless. And they didn’t even find her body until three days after her death. What a fucking horror show.  
  
Sam manages to pick up a few shards of glass and even a piece of the rear bumper the clean-up crew must have missed, but nothing to offer any worthwhile clues. He huffs out his frustration as he turns over the broken gray piece in his hands.  
  
“If they’d just taken decent pictures the day they found her....”  
  
“Sammy, you know that’s too much to hope for from the locals,” Dean says, gazing out over the water. At the very least it was a pretty spot to die. Not that that would be any comfort to Melanie. “They think it’s just a car accident, all they’re gonna care about is pulling the body out.”  
  
“They could have at least called the troopers in. They’d do a better job than this.”  
  
Dean doesn’t respond. He understands Sam’s frustration — hell, he feels it too, on every case they work. But they’ve been doing this too long to expect the locals to ever have a handle on anything. Small town cops, and even the real feds, just have no clue what they’re actually dealing with.  
  
They fare slightly better at the third site, an abandoned water mill just about a mile down the road from where Melanie’s car crashed. Dean lets Sam pick the lock, keeping an eye on the woods on the other side of the river. Something feels off about the place, and he’s learned that his intuition is usually right about this shit.  
  
“Got it,” Sam says, and Dean hears the proud smirk in his voice. Sam pushes at the old wooden door, and it jerks open with a scraping sound. Dean follows his brother inside, both of their flashlights sweeping in arcs across the wide, open space.  
  
“This place is actually kinda awesome,” Dean says, moving his beam of light over the mossy stone walls, scanning the high ceiling. “Like we should come check it out again tomorrow when it’s lighter. Bring Cas.”  
  
Dean doesn’t know why, but he’s sure Cas would like it. Cas likes greenery. The place is covered in it, seeping through all the cracks in the walls and floor.  
  
Sam hums noncommittally. It’s getting dark enough outside to match the blackness inside the mill now, so Dean adds, “Might see something we missed with more natural light.”  
  
“Be sure to keep back from the wheel as far as possible,” Sam says in response, sweeping his flashlight beam over the floor. “Look. Boards are rotted.”  
  
“Jeez.” Dean pauses the arc of his light when he spots the broken, twisted floorboards right next to the old steel water wheel. “That must be where Brock went through.”  
  
Sam nods. “His blood’s all over the ground and that spoke. See there? That one a few feet off the ground from the hole.”  
  
Dean shudders. “Gross. Guts.”  
  
“For real, Dean?” Sam asks. Dean hears rather than sees the bitch face. “We decapitate monsters for a living.” He doesn’t deign to respond.  
  
“There’s no way that spoke took off his head,” Sam continues. “Look how rusty and dull it is. And the river hasn’t been high enough to move the wheel in years. Why would it turn only on the night a kid sneaks into the mill to get high? And look at the blood, I mean the splatter markings... It’s inconsistent with how the police say he died. This, this is the one that gets me. This one doesn’t seem like an accident.”  
  
“Vampire,” Dean supplies.  
  
“All by a river, Dean.” Sam moves away from the water wheel to scan over some of the old pumps and machinery attached to it. “That says water-based creature to me.”  
  
“Drained of blood, Sammy. Drained of blood.”  
  
Sam has already moved on, discussing the uses of water mills during the Industrial Revolution and how interesting it is that this particular mill was built right over the river because usually they’re set to one side. Dean tunes him out. This type of discussion is for his nerdy brother and possibly even nerdier best friend. He just wants to gank whatever’s doing this and get the hell outta Dodge.  
  
Dean doesn’t realize he said that last part out loud until Sam is shining his flashlight right in his face.  
  
“Sam, the eyes!”  
  
Sam is unmoved.  
  
“You’re still upset about Lisa,” he says, matter-of-factly.  
  
Dean rolls his eyes away from the light.  
  
“Do I ever like sticking around after a case? We got a bunker now. I wanna go home, see Mom, cook some burgers, drink some beer. You know, relax. This ain’t about Lisa.”  
  
“Like hell.”  
  
Dean sighs. “Samantha, I know you’d love to paint nails and talk about our exes, but I really just want to gank the son of a bitch that’s practically ripping people’s heads off.”  
  
“She was probably just passing through, Dean.”  
  
“And what the hell does that have to do with anything?”  
  
Sam huffs a sigh that moves his whole giant chest. “Well, you were so upset when you saw her that you threw up. That was kind of a big tip-off that obviously there are unresolved issues there. Then you freaked out on Cas, which you haven’t done in a while. Then all day today any time we were in town you were looking over your shoulder constantly...”  
  
Honestly, Dean actually had forgotten about Lisa for a while, at least while they’ve been out scoping the death sites. Out of sight, out of mind. The initial steady thrum of guilt was abated by his conversation with Cas in the car earlier, and he’s always been good at shoving down memories, both pleasant and otherwise. He’s been more focused on worrying about whether he and Cas are in a good place again after their talk, and then on trying to find something that will crack this case.  
  
But of course Sam would bring Lisa right back to the forefront of his mind, all for the sake of one of his girly, heavy-on-the-feelings conversations.  
  
“I just don’t want you to spend this whole case unfocused.”  
  
“I was focused till you brought it back up again! So thanks, Dr. Phil.”  
  
Sam starts moving again, shining his flashlight along the floor and keeping his eyes down.  
  
“Well, at the very least I just hope you and Cas are doing okay.”  
  
Dean’s stomach clenches at the mention of him and Cas together, as if they’re one entity.  
  
“I’m fine. Cas is fine.”  
  
“Right. He just seemed kind of off last night, too...”  
  
“Oh, and let me guess. You talked about it with him, because that’s a thing you two do now.” Dean tries to keep his naked envy from worming its way into his voice, obviously not succeeding. Sam whips back around to scrutinize Dean.  
  
“Cas and I are friends, Dean. So yeah, I asked him if he was okay.”  
  
“And when did all this go down?”  
  
_Great, Dean. Way to not sound like a jealous asshole....or some shitty, possessive boyfriend...._  
  
“This morning,” Sam says slowly, like Dean might be having trouble following him. “While you were in the shower. I asked, and he said he felt guilty over what happened with her, but he knew not to let it eat at him.”  
  
Well that’s okay, then. Dean and Cas had pretty much the same conversation on the way to pick Sam up from the medical examiner’s office. So Sam and Cas weren’t sharing anything new... although Cas apparently confided in Sam first, which is weird...  
  
“But I think he was lying,” Sam says, and Dean snaps his head up from where he’d been looking at some footprints trapped in the moss and mud on the ground. “I mean, you know Cas. If something is upsetting him he doesn’t always tell us. Usually doesn’t tell us, actually.”  
  
“I already talked to him, Sam.” Dean pulls out his phone to take a picture of the print. “I’m not as incompetent of a friend as you think I am.”  
  
He hands the phone over to Sam, who raises his eyebrows, impressed either by the discovery of the footprint or by Dean’s use of a five dollar word. Either way, Dean resents that look a little.  
  
“This isn’t standard police issue,” Sam says, thankfully dropping the discussion of all things Lisa and Cas. “And didn't the report say Brock was wearing Sperry’s the night he died? This isn’t the right type of sole...”  
  
“It’s Converse. Chuck Taylor’s. Women’s.” Dean stands up, rolling his shoulders back to get out that unpleasant crick from crouching on the ground too long. “We’re either looking for a hipster-monster, or Brock didn’t come here to get high alone.”  
  
They discuss theories on the way back to the motel to pick up Cas. They both agree it seems more likely the print came from some kid than from a monster, meaning there might have been a witness to at least one of these deaths. Sam’s sticking to his river-creature theory and betting it’s a Bunyip — which Dean points out is an Australian monster, but then Sam insists there’s usually an American counterpart. They both agree they need to take a trip to the state penitentiary to see Quinton Jeffords, the guy who was convicted of Lacey Parks’ murder.  
  
Dean is fingering the feather in his jacket pocket, thinking about giving it to Cas and plotting what food he’ll convince Cas to try tonight, when they pull into the parking lot and the headlights freeze on a scene Dean never thought he’d see.  
  
Cas. Lisa. Lisa and Cas, standing way too close to each other, locked in identical poses, hands over their eyes, faces scrunched.  
  
“Dean,” Sam says. It’s a warning. “You should stay in the car.”  
  
It’s a miracle Dean manages to park mostly within the lines. Sam is up and out quickly, shutting the door harder than necessary and walking over to Cas and Lisa.  
  
Dean shouldn’t follow. He shouldn’t. He really, really shouldn’t.  
  
So he does.  
  
Lisa looks at Sam and then at Dean like she’s puzzling something out, and then she puts her hand lightly on Cas’s arm, resting it right in the crook of his elbow. She moves her gaze from the brothers and back to Cas, who’s quietly saying something to her, and she smiles brightly at him.  
  
It stops Dean cold.  
  
When he was a kid, probably like twelve, John went on one particularly long hunt in Minnesota. A wraith, if Dean remembers correctly. While John hunted, Dean and Sam went to school. And for once Dean didn’t hate it, because he made a friend.  
  
Henry.  
  
Henry had a dad who was gone all the time, too. Henry could quote all of Han Solo’s lines from every Star Wars movie. Henry didn’t care that Dean was new and out-of-place. He just wanted someone to play catch with after school and to talk in mock Darth Vader voices with.  
  
Dean had never really had a friend, but at that school he got two. Because then Violet moved into town like three weeks after Dean, and she flocked to the only other outsiders in a small class. She was cute, she was tough (she took both Dean and Henry down in arm wrestling) and she could play Leia while the boys took turns being Han and Luke.  
  
If he ever had any self-awareness, Dean might be able to pull the dusty file concerning those three months at that school out of the cabinet of “Things Dean Won’t Think About” and realize he was kind of in love with them both. Which is why seeing Henry and Violet kiss after school one day was enough to make him turn around, sprint to the motel the Winchesters were currently living in, and cry in the bathroom until his dad and Sammy got there and he had to pretend everything was fine.  
  
Now here in this stupid, nowhere town, Lisa is placing her hand on Cas’s arm and Cas isn’t pulling away, even though Dean knows he doesn’t like just anybody touching him, and Dean thinks about Henry kissing Violet for the first time in over 20 years. Cas smiles back at Lisa, that faint, half smile of his, and Dean knows that this pain, the kind that makes him stop short, makes him want to run and hide, makes him forget how to breathe regularly — this is 100 times worse than some middle school heartbreak.  
  
This is Lisa, the one woman Dean ever actually had a shot at a real life with, back from where he buried her in his mind. And her hand is on Cas’s arm like it’s no big deal, like it belongs there.  
  
This is Cas, Dean’s dorky, sweet, badass, angelic best friend, one of two people Dean has considered burning the world down for, and it takes this exact moment for Dean to realize he’s willing to do that for Cas because he’s in love with him.  
  
He doesn’t love Cas like a brother, he’s in love with Cas like he was once in love with Lisa, but it’s stronger. More sure, less dependent on unrealistic expectations and stilted attempts at normalcy. Because Cas knows Dean, knows him from Hell to the apocalypse to Purgatory and to the Darkness and everywhere in between, and Cas has always been there just the same.  
  
Dean realizes he’s in love with his best friend while Lisa is looking at Cas like he’s the greatest thing since automatic rifles, and Dean is utterly fucked.

///

They stumble through what might be the most awkward introductions in history, with Cas and Sam mostly speaking for Dean while Lisa looks at him like he might not be quite right in the head.  
  
Sam, Chuck bless him, has recovered from his initial shock at running into Dean’s ex and their angel best friend practically snuggled against each other, and he’s handling the ensuing conversation like a normal person, showing Lisa his Kinko’s-made badge and valiantly striving to keep her attention mostly fixed upon himself. That way Cas can continue looking wide-eyed and guilty, his attention darting from Dean to the ground and back, and Dean can continue trying not to stare at either Cas ( _God, I love him, I’m an idiot, he doesn’t feel that way about me, was he hitting on her?_ ) or at Lisa ( _I cannot believe she’s here, what if she realizes who I am and what I did, why does she keep looking at Cas like that, Oh god, Oh god, what if Ben shows up?_ ).  
  
It is a goddamn miracle Dean’s not having a heart attack, especially considering he’s getting up there in age and his diet consists mostly of artery-clogging diner burgers and pie.  
  
“So Agent Stein already told you what we’re here for?” Sam is saying, and Dean tries to tune into his brother’s voice, hold on to it like a life raft.  
  
“Yes, he said you were looking into the death at that mill?”  
  
Sam nods, says something about how it’s likely nothing but an accident. Dean looks at Lisa and is horrified to note that with her new, cropped haircut she looks sort of like that fiery chick who kicked Tony Stark’s ass in _Iron Man 3_ , the same chick he got a weird boner for while watching the movie next to Cas in the bunker.  
  
Well, it’s nice to know that even though he’s just realized he’s pretty gay for his angel pal that doesn’t mean he can’t still have a libido for beautiful women... Unless he actually got that boner because Cas had been sitting super close to him, personal space be damned, and Dean had liked Cas there, all warm at his side...  
  
_Oh, fucking fuck._  
  
“Dean,” Cas says, voice low and rough, and Dean loves that voice. “Are you all right?”  
  
Cas’s blue eyes, which Dean also loves, _goddamn it,_ are comically wide. It’s clearly his I’m Trying To Communicate How Uncomfortable This Is And Silently Offer You An Out face.  
  
“Agent Harry?” Lisa parrots Cas’s concern, but it’s also genuine, and it reminds Dean too damn much of the way she looked at him when he came to tell her goodbye before running straight to Michael.  
  
He cannot take both of them looking at him like that. They’re both beautiful and worried, and he loved one of them once and loves the other one right now.  
  
“Sorry.” His voice is usually deep, but it sounds so rough with disuse now that Dean has to clear his throat, working around the huge lump that’s settled there. “It’s just...”  
  
“You remind us very strongly of someone we used to know,” Sam finishes.  
  
“Right.” Lisa has blessedly moved a step away from Cas now, and she wraps her arms around herself. Dean recognizes her discomfort, but he doesn’t know how to stop it, how to make this normal. It can’t be normal. “Cas told me that, actually.”  
  
Dean can’t quite help the glare he shoots at Cas for giving her his real name. Cas tilts his head and narrows his eyes into his What Was I Supposed To Do, Dean face.  
  
Lisa looks between Cas and Dean.  
  
“Am I missing something here?” she asks, and Dean thinks, _You’re missing so many things._ “Wait, someone you used to know? She’s dead?”  
  
“No,” Sam says quickly, at the same time Cas says, “Yes.”  
  
Dean decides now is the time for him to get it together and save the day.  
  
“Dead to us,” he amends. He leans toward Lisa conspiratorially, trying not to be shaken by the fact that she still wears the same perfume. “Double agent.”  
  
“Oh.” Lisa sounds very small. “That’s...awful?”  
  
“It really was.” Sam’s clearly trying to steer this conversation back into more sane territory. “We’re sorry to bring it up to a complete stranger.” He glares at Dean, who can only half-heartedly shrug.  
  
Cas clears his throat awkwardly before speaking again.  
  
“Well, as, uh, lovely as it’s been to meet you Mrs. Braeden, we probably should get back to discussing our case.”  
  
“It’s just Ms. Braeden, but please, call me Lisa.” And if that’s not a come-on, Dean has never slept with a bronze medal Olympic gymnast (which he has, _that did happen, Sam!_ ). “And my earlier offer of dinner still stands.” Dean’s stomach drops, and Cas’s eyes dart briefly from Lisa to him and then back. “It’s almost 8:30, surely you guys could use some real food?”  
  
Cas looks back over his shoulder and Dean notices for the first time the small pile of junk food laid out across the picnic table there. There’s a Snickers bar. It has to be for Dean. Cas got that for him and Dean loves him for it and apparently Lisa invited him to dinner before Sam and Dean interrupted whatever the fuck it was they were talking about and that’s a kick in the gut in so many ways.  
  
Dean’s head can’t take this many emotions. It’s starting to ache, right at the front, along his forehead. He rubs a temple, and he can see Cas looking at him from the corner of his eye.  
  
“I was just asking Cas to come eat with me, maybe tell me more about the case... I mean, only what he’s allowed to tell,” Lisa says, talking mostly to Sam because she’s clearly pegged Dean as a crazy person. “I, um... I have a son out camping with friends nearby. I just want to be sure he’s safe.”  
  
_Ben._  
  
God, but Dean had loved that kid. Spunky, funny, caring. And now, apparently, camping out not too far from where a monster is chopping people’s heads off. Dean feels a spike of worry.  
  
“You both should come, too. Take a break.” Lisa’s looking at Dean now, kindly, softly. Dean realizes she must think part of why he’s acting so weird is because his job is stressful. Not because the epiphany that he’s in love with Cas just hit him like a two-ton anvil. Definitely not because he used to live with her and her son and erased all their memories of it.  
  
“Ummm,” Sam says inelegantly.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean cuts in, way too eager. “Yeah, dinner sounds great. I love to eat!”  
  
Sam looks at him like he’s an idiot, Lisa looks at him like she’s trying to decide what level of insane she’s about to deal with, and Cas... Cas looks sad?  
  
He looks sad, and Dean wonders if maybe Cas wanted to go alone with Lisa, but clearly he would see how messed up that is, right? That Cas can’t let Lisa hit on him because he mind-wiped her once, and that’s not really a cool thing to do to a potential romantic partner. So Dean decides he’s not going to feel bad for cutting in on this one.  
  
Because he definitely didn’t agree to what will most likely be the most uncomfortable meal of all time just because he hates the idea of Lisa and Cas smiling at each other, sitting crammed on the same side of some booth in some crap diner. That’s not why he’s shoving Cas toward their room and muttering, “Go put some clothes on.” That’s not why he’s practically dragging Sam to the Impala, yelling over his shoulder to a confused Lisa, “We’ll wait on Cas! Meet us at that Italian place down the road!” It’s not why he says, “Shut up” to Sam preemptively the second they’re in the car, and it’s not why he can’t look at Cas as they make the short drive.  
  
_No,_ Dean tells himself, _you’re not doing this because you’re jealous. You’re doing this so you can evaluate whether Ben’s safe where he is. You’re doing this because Cas can’t hook up with Lisa from a purely moral standpoint that he might not understand because he’s not human. You’re the good guy here, Winchester._  
  
_You’re the good guy._  
  
It’s getting harder and harder to believe that.

///

Several thousand years ago Cas watched as the Egyptian army, led by arrogant and fool-hardy men, was swept away as the Red Sea folded back on top of itself and the Israelites scrambled to safety on the distant shore. Cas recalls feeling slightly sorry for the Egyptians — they were soldiers following orders, just like him. Did they all need to die? Couldn’t their Father have simply swept the army back to the opposite shore, so that both sides could spread the witness of His awesome power? Surely the Egyptians would have repented of their sins to the God who spared their lives?  
  
Cas asked these questions to one of his brothers or sisters. He doesn’t remember who. Another memory stolen from him in another round of vicious reprogramming, most likely.  
  
He does remember the answer, somehow.  
  
“Castiel,” his sibling said, “Our Father need not consult you prior to showering His wrath upon the unrighteous.”  
  
He received a similar answer when he asked Zachariah why they needed Dean to torture Alastair. He’d pleaded, “There must be another way!” to deaf ears.  
  
“Castiel.” Zachariah’s voice dripped with malice. “God has commanded this. Who are you to question His plans for the Righteous Man?”  
  
“No one,” Cas whispered, as Zachariah towered over him, six wings spread, teeth bared in all four of his faces.  
  
“That’s right. Now you may fancy yourself his guardian, or even his friend...” There Zachariah sneered, his animal faces distorted into ugly grimaces. “...but you are not. He doesn’t care for you, and it is not your mission to care for him. It is not your mission to think for yourself. It is your mission to deliver messages unto Dean Winchester whenever you’re ordered to, no matter what the message may be!”  
  
Something in Cas that had always been broken snapped a little more that day.  
  
“But I do _know_ Dean, and I know this will adversely affect him...”  
  
"Let me repeat myself, because you’re obviously too thick to understand the first time around.” Zachariah was still looming, always looming. Cas felt like nothing next to him, his true form dwarfed by his angry older brother. “You are, under no circumstances, to think you have any right to change the path of Dean Winchester. In any way.”  
  
Uriel took over as commander of the garrison after that. Dean tortured Alastair, and it all ended as terribly as Cas suspected it would.  
  
And down the line Cas decided he would think for himself, he would question orders from a father he’d never seen. He would follow Dean unto the ends of the earth.  
  
And he’d let Dean chose his own life. He would never again force Dean to yield to Heaven. He’d let Dean stay with the Braedens even when Cas desperately needed his help.  
  
Cas screwed up when he took in the souls, but once he was himself again all he’d wanted was to fix his relationship with Dean, to ensure Dean was no longer marred by Cas’s mistakes, by Heaven’s fury. He’d kept Naomi away from Dean as long as he could, he’d kept Dean separate from his angel army, he’d said yes to Lucifer to keep the devil from killing Sam and ruining Dean. He’d said yes to save the world, save the Winchesters, save the man he’d come to love.  
  
He has no choice now but to step back and watch Dean live his life without interference of any sort, especially from Cas. Dean now has his mother, has his brother, and he could have Lisa. Wants to have Lisa, if his eagerness to go to this dinner is any indication. Cas can’t take that away from him, can’t tell him _I don’t want you to love her again because I want you to love me._  
  
It doesn’t matter what Cas wants. That’s a lesson drilled into his psyche over millennia. Cas doesn’t know best. Cas shouldn’t think for himself. Cas screws up everything he lays his hands on, but by some miracle Dean is still his friend, and he should feel grateful to have that much.  
  
The Winchesters walk into the restaurant, and Lisa is there, following close behind. Cas stands by the car, rests his hand on top of the hood.  
This is what he does. He lets himself get left behind.  
  
He gathers himself for a moment, then slowly walks inside.  
  
The rest of the group has already found a booth toward the back. Sam has co-opted the seat next to Dean, who is staring grumpily at a menu while Sam talks to Lisa over the table. Clearly Dean wishes he were next to Lisa, and Cas thinks about offering a trade, but he’s not sure how to do so in a subtle way.  
  
He slides into the seat next to Lisa, who smiles brightly at him.  
  
“Agent Burke was just saying that he and Agent Harry looked over the accident sites today and didn’t find anything strange,” she says happily. “And I pulled up Ben’s campsite location on my phone. They told me that it’s pretty far away from any ‘suspicious activity.’”  
  
Her smile now is even broader than he’s seen it before, and Cas has to smile back. Lisa’s glad that Ben is in a safe place, and he’s glad, too.  
  
Dean clears his throat, and Cas jerks back from looking at Lisa, red-faced. He doesn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.  
  
“Anyway,” Lisa says, sounding slightly chagrined, “thank you for reassuring me, Agent Burke.”  
  
“You can just call me Sam.” Sam jerks a thumb toward his brother. “And this is Dean.”  
  
Dean’s head pops up at that, and he narrows his eyes at Sam, who shrugs.  
  
“Sorry, um, Agent Harry, I don’t have to call you by your first name...”  
  
“No, no, no. You’re fine,” Dean stutters. “Just, we don’t normally... uh... get to know civilians on a job, you know?”  
  
“I understand.” Lisa’s face is solemn. “I do really appreciate you guys helping me to feel better about Ben being out there, though.”  
  
“You don’t need to worry Ms. Braeden,” Sam says sincerely.  
  
There are several moments of awkward silence before a waiter stops by to take drink orders and set a basket of breadsticks down on the table. Dean is the only one who grabs one, biting into it immediately.  
  
Moaning appreciatively, Dean licks one of his fingers clean of the buttery garlic sauce. Cas can feel his face start to heat at the sight of Dean, with his finger in his mouth, making that noise.  
  
“Damn, this is good. I’ve been starving all friggin’ day. You want some?” he asks, gesturing toward Lisa and Cas’s side of the table, mouth half full. Sam smacks his brother’s arm and whispers, “Dude, basic table manners.”  
  
Cas is about to take the half breadstick from Dean when he realizes that of course the offer was meant for Lisa.  
  
“Uh, no. Thank you, though,“ Lisa says, and she scoots a bit closer to Cas. “I’m actually a fitness instructor back home, so I tend to try and keep my carb intake down. It sometimes stinks, but... have to set a good example, you know?”  
  
Dean nods and swallows his half of the breadstick morosely. Cas picks up the other half, mostly out of pity, and Dean gives him a tight smile.  
  
Sam starts talking to Lisa about workout regimens and the benefits and drawbacks of high-fat, low-carb diets. Lisa occasionally asks Cas about his opinions on various exercises, and Cas answers from a purely speculative standpoint. He doesn’t need to actually workout to maintain his vessel, after all, but she clearly mistakes him for a runner and he can’t correct her. Dean looks miserable for the duration of the conversation.  
  
The waiter comes by to take their order, and Sam and Lisa both ask for salad. Dean orders tortellini, and Cas is left to decide on a meal he’s not sure he’ll be able to eat. His hunger is a fickle thing, and it never takes much to satisfy it.  
  
He usually just eats off of Dean’s plate, but he can’t do that in mixed company. Dean’s made that clear before, hissing, “It looks like we’re a fucking couple when you do that around other people, man.” Which hurts, but Cas is very adept at hiding those sorts of feelings by now. He learned from the best, Dean Winchester himself.  
  
“I’ll try the spaghetti with pesto,” Cas says, picking out the first item he sees on the menu.  
  
“Oh, classic man,” Lisa teases as the waiter walks away, bumping Cas playfully with her shoulder. Cas tenses slightly and glances at Dean, who is very obviously avoiding looking at Cas or Lisa.  
  
Cas realizes a beat too late that Lisa probably expects a reply. “I’m not very creative,” is what comes out, and he winces.  
  
But Lisa laughs like that might be the funniest thing she’s ever heard.  
  
“You’re very odd,” she says, and it sounds almost fond.  
  
That’s how most of the night goes. Cas will make an innocuous, deadpan comment, sometimes without thinking, sometimes to try and get Dean to lighten up and laugh, and Lisa will crack up instead. Dean falls silent after the food arrives, but he barely eats, just pushing his tortellini around on his plate aimlessly. Sam looks somewhere between amused and worried, Lisa chats away happily about Ben and her job and the wedding they’ll be driving to next week. She keeps asking questions about the FBI to Cas instead of the rest of the group, and Cas is just trying to make it through the meal without earning Dean’s ire for accidentally monopolizing Lisa’s attention.  
  
When the checks come, Cas freezes in fear. Sometime during the first apocalypse Dean explained to him, after picking up a girl’s bar tab and disappearing to the bathroom with her for ten minutes, that to pay for someone’s food or drink symbolizes a sexual interest in them (Cas did not point out that Dean always paid for his food and drinks because he knew Dean wouldn’t appreciate that).  
  
Cas’s social skills are still slightly below par (an expression Dean uses that Cas understands has something to do with being bad at sports), and up till now he couldn’t have guessed whether Lisa’s constant attempts at holding a conversation were flirtatious or purely friendly. But if she pays his bill...  
  
Sam averts the crisis by saying, “Actually, can you put it all on mine?” and hands over one of his scam credit cards. Lisa protests, but Sam waves her off. Cas watches as Dean slumps back a little in relief. Evidently he’d been worried about the check conundrum as well.  
  
Once the bill is settled they walk out to the parking lot, pausing in front of the Impala.  
  
“Dinner was nice,” Lisa says, shifting a little in place, hands bunched up in her purse strap. “Thank you for paying for me. And for everything else.” She waves her hand to encompass the “everything else.”  
  
“That’s the federal government, ma’am.” Dean’s wearing his brightest, fakest smile. “Always here to help.”  
  
Lisa looks at Dean like there’s something about him she doesn’t understand. Dean shifts uncomfortably, smile falling.  
  
“Right, well if any of you guys want to help me with my taxes, too...” She trails off in a slightly forced laugh.  
  
“Falsifying tax reports is a felony,” Cas says seriously. “We’d be fired for it.”  
  
“You are too funny!” Lisa shakes her head, laughing genuinely now. “Of course I’m not attempting to coerce federal agents into helping me get out of my taxes.” She winks at him, and Cas can only blink back dazedly.  
  
_What is happening?_  
  
Coming to stand between Cas and Dean, Sam starts tugging subtly on their arms, pulling them toward the Impala.  
  
“It was so nice to meet you Ms. Braeden,” Sam says.  
  
“Wait!”  
  
Lisa holds out a hand and the men stop. She digs briefly in her purse and pulls out a business card and a pen, scribbling something on the back of the card. She then hands it to Cas.  
  
“Just in case there are any changes in the case and you think I should go get Ben,” she says. “My number is on there.”  
  
Waving goodbye, she turns and walks to her Durango. Cas and the Winchesters watch her go, then get in their own car.  
  
Dean snorts as soon as they’re safely in the Impala and out of earshot.  
  
“Can you believe her?” he asks Sam, who shrugs. “She should be all worried about Ben, but no! She just wants to hit on Cas!”  
  
Oh. So that’s for sure what was happening. Cas’s stomach sinks. Dean sounds angry, but surely he’ll realize it’s not Cas’s fault?  
  
“Dean, she’s a nice girl,” Sam says. “She met Cas first; she felt more comfortable with him. And dude, Lisa spent over half of dinner talking about Ben. She loves that kid. Maybe you’re reading too much into it?”  
  
Dean grunts.  
  
“And I mean, personally, I expected that to go a lot worse. It was actually kind of nice, wasn’t it? To see she’s doing well?”  
  
The grumbled reply is too low for Cas to understand from the backseat.  
  
He holds the business card Lisa handed him up slightly so it catches the light from the hotel sign as they pull into the parking lot. It’s plain. It has Lisa’s name, her cell phone number, the address of the gym she works at, somewhere in Michigan. Cas turns it over.  
  
On the back she's scrawled out an invitation even he can understand — “Room 111.”

///

Stress levels have hit an all-time high for Dean.  
  
Okay, well maybe that’s bullshit. He felt more stressed when Sam said yes to Lucifer, when Cas said yes to Lucifer (and how the hell has he lost two people he loves to that dick?), when Bobby died, when Amara was breathing down his neck, three weeks ago when Mom said she might get her own place and he realized that even though Mary Winchester is back it doesn’t mean they’ll always be one happy family.  
  
So, yeah, Dean has had a lot to worry about in his life, but this particular, potent mix of stress and heartbreak and jealousy feels new.  
  
Lisa has a thing for Cas. That much is painfully obvious. Dean knows the signs. He sat on the receiving end of those signs not that long ago.  
  
Dean Winchester knows the mating calls of Lisa Braeden.  
  
She sat close, leaned into Cas’s space the way she once leaned into Dean’s. She laughed too loudly at Cas’s dumb jokes and even the stuff he said when he was just being Cas, not because he was trying to be funny.  
  
Dean knows the difference. Lisa doesn’t. It makes him bitter.  
  
It’s hard to believe it was nearly 20 years ago that Lisa leaned over to Dean at a seedy bar, said, “Hey, you wanna get out of here?” and winked that wink that Dean caught her giving Cas last night. Over taxes, of all the things.  
  
In the midst of a hunt, Dean had reluctantly turned her down, asking, “Tomorrow?” She’d slid him her number on a bar napkin.  
  
Dean knows what Lisa wrote on the back of her business card, and it sure as hell wasn’t her work number. She might be older, but her moves have only updated with middle age. Bar napkins turn into business cards. House phone lines turn into motel room numbers.  
  
And even if he didn’t know Lisa, even if he hadn’t known her intimately at one time, Dean knows Cas. He watched in the rearview mirror as Cas’s eyes widened when he took in the writing on the back of the card, watched his friend quickly stuff it in his inside suit jacket pocket and glance around nervously.  
  
Nervous with fear or anticipation, though? That’s the million dollar question. The kind of question that kept Dean up all night after their awkward family-plus-Dean’s-ex-girlfriend-who-doesn’t-remember-him dinner.  
  
Cas did stay in their room last night, alternating between reading lore by moonlight in the solitary chair and laying sprawled out on the floor at the foot of the beds, listening to the old iPod he’d commandeered from Dean’s duffle (Cas likes to keep audio books on the thing, and Dean begrudgingly allows it.).  
  
Dean knows Cas’s nighttime antics because he too stayed up all night, and not because he’s an angel with a frankly nonsensical need-for-sleep schedule, but because he couldn’t sleep while his brain kept imagining Cas sneaking out to Lisa’s room.  
  
Normally Dean wouldn’t be able to picture Cas wanting sex at all. But the guy did sleep with that reaper, and he was smiling pretty warmly at Lisa. Following that thought, Dean lay awake and started to think about what Cas having sex might be like, what sort of noises he’d make, how he’d look with his hair all messed up, what his lips would look like, all swollen and kiss-bit, and before he could stop that train of thought Dean realized he’d been thinking of himself having sex with Cas.  
  
Not graphically, not yet, but still.  
  
He really is fucked, and not just in his waking dreams. And those were the type of thoughts that kept Dean from his hard-earned rest.  
  
The combination of sour feelings swirling in his gut and lack of sleep have made him spectacularly unpleasant — at least according to Sam — which is unfortunate, because today they’re on the hunt for their Converse-wearing, crime-scene-disrupting mystery woman, and Sam found a lead. Apparently, kids will post anything on Facebook these days, including pictures of themselves smoking questionable substances with their dead friends. Dean’s just glad social media wasn’t a thing during his teenage years.  
  
Lydia Pak lives in another town thirty minutes away, which is possibly why local police didn’t look into her after Brock’s death, despite several incriminating online photo albums. More likely they’re just bad at their jobs. Sam is driving to her house, having insisted that Dean take the back and try to sleep because “you look like shit, Dean.” Cas is listening to “The Book Thief” through headphones and occasionally commenting on how the novel’s Death compares to the real deal. Dean finds him hopelessly endearing.  
  
“You know that’s a kid’s book, right?” he asks, without any malice, leaning up from his sprawled position in the back seat to see his friend.  
  
Cas just hums in response, looking out the window. Dean wants to ask him about Lisa and the business card, just to see what he says, but he doesn’t know that he wants to hear the answer.  
  
“I bet Death’s not a foodie.” Dean points to the iPod. “How did that stack up?”  
  
“It is a detail most adaptations miss.”  
  
“Man, that guy loved him some good pizza.”  
  
“He wasn’t actually a guy, Dean.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, ancient, unknowable being, yada yada yada.”  
  
Cas turns and quirks an eyebrow at Dean.  
  
“I’m an ancient and unknowable being.”  
  
Dean grins at him.  
  
“Buddy, you wear your socks inside out because you don’t like how the seam feels. You once asked me if I thought Dr. Phil was a lonely man because you were, and I quote, ‘Concerned for his wellbeing considering all the sad stories he must hear.’ You listen to ‘The Book Thief,’ and it’s a kids book. Ancient you may be, unknowable you are not.”  
  
Cas gives him that warm, sincere smile that Dean loves but so rarely sees. He wants to keep it, hoard it, never let anyone else earn that stupid smile.  
  
“Well, you know me, in any case,” Cas says.  
  
“It’s ‘cause you’re my ancient, unknowable being.”  
  
_For fuck’s sake, Winchester..._  
  
Cas looks at Dean and blinks, once, twice, like he’s not sure how to process that and his emotional sensors are short-circuiting. Sam is giving Dean the Did You Really Just Say That face in the rearview mirror.  
  
And Dean is sputtering, “Uh, like... you know... best friends and all that shit.”  
  
“Of course,” Cas says, and Dean feels like maybe there was a quick flash of something like disappointment there for a second. But no, he’s got to be imagining things again. He and Cas are never really going to have sex; Cas isn’t disappointed that Dean is keeping their relationship firmly in platonic territory.  
  
“Dean,” Sam says, just in time, “maybe you really should get some sleep.”

///

Lydia Pak, as it turned out, was at the mill the night Brock Anderson died, but she swore up and down that she left him there alone and very much alive.  
  
Dean believes her. She’d acted so nervous when she opened her door to three federal agents, but clearly her biggest concern was that they were going to bust her for smoking pot. Sam gave her a very dad-esque lecture about making wise choices and not ruining her future, Cas gave her his burner phone number and asked her to call if she remembered anything else about that night, and Dean whispered conspiratorially to her as they were leaving, “Don’t worry about the drugs. We’re cool.”  
  
Unfortunately, Lydia was the best lead they had. Sam wants to drive straight to Kuna, where Lacey Parks’ killer resides in prison, to see if the guy really is as innocent as he’s claimed for the past eight years.  
  
Dean knows he should be on board with that plan, but the thought of driving across the state in one go when he’s already so exhausted by this mess with Cas and Lisa makes him push back.  
  
“Why don’t Cas and I stick around here, scope out the mill in better light?” Dean asks. “You can go talk to the creep. Aren’t murderers an obsession of yours?”  
  
They’re back at the motel in the parking lot, and Cas has disappeared into the room to get Sam’s laptop and some of the lore books they brought along. Sam is leaning against the Impala, juggling the keys in his hand and glaring at Dean.  
  
“I don’t know that we should split this one up. And just because I think serial killers are interesting doesn’t mean I’m obsessed,” he says.  
  
“How many victims did Bundy have, again?”  
  
“More than 30. Shut up. That’s not the point.”  
  
“Enlighten me then, Sam.”  
  
Sam sighs and throws his hands up in exasperation.  
  
“You’re being weird, Dean! You were super weird last night with Lisa, and I thought it was because seeing her made you miss what you two had and maybe you felt guilty and you didn’t know how to act around her. But then...”  
  
Dean knows he doesn’t want Sam to finish that sentence, but because he’s been able to bully his brother into submission on the no-feelings thing in the past he presses into it with a confrontational, “But then what?”  
  
“Then I thought about it some more, and I realized you were most upset because you thought she was hitting on Cas.”  
  
“So?” Dean snaps.  
  
“So, are you upset that Lisa is showing an attraction to someone else right in front of you, or are you upset because that someone else is Cas?”  
  
Sam sounds so patient and hopeful, like maybe Dean might open up to him. The poor guy should really know better by now.  
  
“Look, she’s my ex, he’s my best friend. Also, in case you forgot, he helped me erase her friggin’ memories when he was hopped up on soul juice! It’s a pretty fucked up situation, Sam. I’m upset about all of it!”  
  
Dean sees Cas opening the door of their room out of the corner of his eye. He’ll be walking back over to them any second now, and this conversation needs to end.  
  
The pitying look Sam gives him makes Dean kind of want to punch his brother in the face.  
  
“Right. Best friend. Not, you know, _your_ ancient and unknowable being or anything _profound_ like that.”  
  
Sam knows. Sam knows, and it’s all because Dean couldn’t control his stupid mouth around Cas. Cas, that typhoon stuffed into a person who Dean loves, who is almost at the car.  
  
“Drop it, Sam,” Dean hisses his brother’s name. “Now.”  
  
Sam’s eyes widen. “Oh my god, I'm right! You’re jealous of Lisa, not Cas...”  
  
“Goddamn it, drop it!”  
  
Cas stops right in front of the bickering brothers and looks between them questioningly. His arms are full of books and Sam’s laptop. His hair is curling a bit at the edges, and his fed suit is wrinkled because he never hangs it up right.  
  
_He’d look pretty sharp if he would ever let us buy him a suit that actually fits,_ Dean thinks, then mentally kicks himself.  
  
“Drop what?” Cas asks, getting that crinkle between his eyebrows that forms when he’s adorably confused.  
  
“Nothing,” the Winchesters answer simultaneously, Sam calm and Dean panicked.  
  
Cas’s eyes narrow and shift between them suspiciously, clearly unsatisfied with the blatant lie and deciding whether to call them out on it. Dean can feel sweat start to form under his stiff shirt collar. He silently wills Cas to not press the subject.  
  
“Okaaaay,” Cas says finally, and that dragged out, sarcastic response is clearly something he learned from his two terrible human influences. “So, what’s the plan? Head straight to the prison to talk to Quinton Jeffords, put the fear of God in this perp?”  
  
Man, he’s so eager. Cas being this adorably dorky is not helping Dean concentrate on more important things, like the case. Or like the fact that his ex is staying three doors down and probably wants to bone Dean’s angel, who might not be disinclined to take her up on the offer.  
  
Sam laughs good-naturedly and claps Cas on the shoulder, breaking Dean out of a potential descent into a dream world where Cas applies that eagerness to Dean in bed.  
  
“Actually, Cas, I think I’m going to head out to Kuna alone. You and Dean can stick around here, talk to some locals, scope out the mill again. Isn’t that what you wanted to do, Dean?”  
  
Dean, though glad to not be roped into the drive to Kuna (and glad for some time alone with Cas), is not buying Sam’s change of heart.  
  
“I thought you wanted us to stick together?”  
  
“I did, but...” Sam shrugs. “All three of us interrogating one person is overkill. You saw that girl this morning. She was terrified of us.” Then he grins slyly. “You and Cas make good partners, and you’ve already worked with the locals. You two should stay here. You know... being _partners._ ” Sam puts an unnecessary emphasis on that word. “Holding each other up, watching each other’s backs, up close and personal. Working together to bring this all to a satisfying climax.”  
  
Sometimes Dean forgets that he loves his kid brother so much he once sold his soul for him, and he just wants to strangle Sam. He can only be thankful that most innuendos fly right over Cas’s head.  
  
“Actually Sam, I was hoping to have a chance to sit in on this interview,” Cas says. Dean valiantly tries to not look disappointed. Then Cas says, “Maybe Dean and I could drive to Kuna?”  
  
Dean, who had been dreading the drive, perks up at hearing Cas not even considering going as Sam’s partner. Plus, what a chance to get Cas far away from Lisa and still get some one-on-one time.  
  
Sam, on the other hand, doesn’t look too pleased with this idea. He can deny it all he wants, but Dean knows his oversized brain is filled with murdery fun facts and he obviously wants to interview this guy himself.  
  
Even though Sam deserves to rot in this town bumming rides from the local beat cops for his super obvious comments about Dean and Cas, Dean decides to throw him a bone. This time. At least it will spare him the back ache he now gets from too many hours in the Impala.  
  
“Cas, next case we have where there’s a jailhouse interview you and I will take it, okay? Sam’s already got this one planned out.”  
  
“Oh, well all right.” Cas only sounds mildly disappointed, so Dean doesn’t feel too bad. He looks at Dean and lifts his armful of research materials. “Since we’re staying here, I guess we don’t need all this?”  
  
“Nah, take it back in. Let me call the Sheriff and see if we can’t arrange a ride out to river after lunch.”  
  
Cas shrugs in agreement and turns back to the room. Dean avoids looking at his brother’s stupid grin until their friend is safely indoors.  
  
“Fuck you, Sam,” he says curtly, flipping the bird in his direction.  
  
Shaking his head, Sam walks around to driver’s side of the Impala, opening the door and starting to maneuver his gigantic body inside before he stops and says, “Hey, I’m going to get a room there for the night. Figure your shit out, Dean.”  
  
He’s in the car and backing out before Dean can think to respond. He kicks out half-heartedly at a rear tire as Sam drives away.

///

Dean orders a pizza to the room while they wait on a deputy to give them a ride to the river. He and Cas eat in comfortable silence while Dean flips through lore books from the bunker and Cas looks at the town’s newspaper archives on the Internet.  
  
Dean has seemed much happier today than yesterday, and Cas hopes he’s put Lisa out of his mind. The thought of her business card, buried underneath a pile of dirty clothes in his bag, makes him shift uncomfortably.  
  
“Find something interesting?” Dean asks, and Cas briefly panics that maybe Dean knows exactly what he was thinking about. But no, Dean is gesturing toward the laptop with a questioning look on his face.  
  
“Um, two river-related drowning deaths. First one was a girl named Hannah Swift about nine years ago. She was five, went under while swimming with her older brothers and never resurfaced. Her body washed up on shore a week later. Not too far from the mill, actually. Then a older man named Wendell Perkins, about six months ago. I mean, the sheriff’s office assumed he’d drowned. He was known to sit at the river, just fishing by himself. Had a cabin nearby. They never found a body.”  
  
Dean whistles. “That first one, the little girl, could be something. Happened right before Lacey Parks died. Hikers found Lacey’s body not far from the river. Could have taken the old man out, too.”  
  
“But the blood?”  
  
“I know, I know. That still points to vamp to me. And then there’s the time between kills. So many people are on that damn river every day in the summer. Why is everyone dying now?”  
  
Cas thinks about this, strumming his fingers along the side of the laptop.  
  
“Wendell Perkins doesn’t match the other victims, either. They were all college-aged or teenage students, either home or vacationing for the week.”  
  
Dean sighs, low and long, slumping over a little on the bed across from Cas.  
  
“And why would a little girl ghost target all those kids? Why would she drain their blood? That’s some fucked up shit. That implies real violence, even more than a drowning.” Dean runs a hand over his face, and Cas wishes, as he often does, that he could take the weight of the world away from his friend. Dean’s always been like Atlas — carrying all the pain and heartache he sees in everyone else squarely on his own shoulders. “We’re probably gonna have to talk to the family. Christ, I hate cases with kids.”  
  
He looks off to the side, working his bottom lip between his teeth in thought. Cas watches the motion, wonders if Dean is thinking about Ben. Dean’s phone lets out a trilling ring, and he snaps back to attention, holding it to his ear and answering, “This is Harry.”  
  
Putting the laptop away, Cas listens to Dean’s end of the conversation. It’s the deputy, here to give them a ride. He silently takes Dean’s stack of lore books away from him and hides them in Sam’s duffle under the bed. It’s never pleasant when housekeeping thinks you’re Satanists, though they’d undoubtedly be more shocked to learn that two of the three men staying in this room have been possessed by the devil himself.  
  
“Deputy’s outside,” Dean says, putting his cell in his pocket. “You ready?”  
  
Cas is already pulling his wrinkled suit jacket on. He leaves his trench coat on the bed. It’s too hot for that today.  
  
The officer driving them to the mill introduces himself as Deputy Jake Tanner, and he’s clearly new to the job. Tanner has none of the predisposition to treat (fake) feds like intruders the way all seasoned local police seem to do. He’s young and enthusiastic, chatting happily with Dean and Cas on the drive. Sensing quickly that Dean’s patience is being tested by Tanner’s inclination to ramble about anything other than the cases they’re here for, Cas picks up most of the conversation.  
  
Tanner’s theory about the two most recent deaths is an echo of Sheriff Dawes’ — they’re accidents. He wasn’t around for the drowning of Hannah Swift, but he recalls Wendell Perkins well enough.  
  
“Nobody’s gonna miss that old codger,” Tanner says, just as they’re pulling up to the mill. “One mean son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that much.” He gets out of the car, pulling out a set of keys and heading toward the mill. Dean and Cas share a look, then follow.  
  
“What do you mean he was a mean son of a bitch?” Dean asks with a careful mix of curiosity and indifference as Tanner works the lock. He’s struggling more with the key than Sam would with a paper clip, and Cas can see the way Dean’s fingers twitch impatiently.  
  
Tanner finally gets the door open, pumping one fist before stepping inside and answering, “Oh, he just hated people. We got a lot of calls about him threatening anyone who came anywhere near his land. He had a place just by the river, and it had some old trails on it. He was always chasing people off them when he was around. No one was too sad when he drowned.” The young deputy lifts both shoulders as if to say, ‘that’s just how it is.’ Cas and Dean nod in silent agreement.  
  
“There aren’t any lights in here, sorry fellas. We did search the place after Brock Anderson’s body was found. Didn’t see much but a dead guy.”  
  
Tanner pauses as the radio on his belt starts buzzing and the room is filled with the low voice of a dispatcher.  
  
“Aw, shit,” he swears. “Hey, I’m sorry, that’s me they’re asking for. Some stupid kids throwing rocks at cars down the road. I gotta go, will you two be okay till I get back?”  
  
Cas starts to answer yes, but the deputy has already sprinted out the door.  
  
“Newbies,” Dean scoffs.  
  
“He was nice enough.”  
  
“At least he was a chatty Cathy.” Dean stands in the middle of the room, looking up at something Cas can’t see. Maybe he’s just thinking again. “If that Perkins guy hadn’t died eight years after Lacey Parks, we might’ve been on to something there.”  
  
Cas looks around the mill. It’s dark, but his grace is strong enough to help his eyes adjust quickly. The floors are rotted in places, and the machinery that litters the space is rusted and grimy. But it’s sort of beautiful nonetheless. There’s so much moss growing everywhere, along the floor and over the walls. Tree branches reach in through the upper windows, and ivy has claimed the beams of the ceiling. The takeover of mother nature has turned the neglect of time into a beautiful, hidden garden.  
  
“Pretty cool, huh?”  
  
Cas looks to Dean, who’s grinning.  
  
“Beautiful. Green might be my favorite color,” Cas says, then adds without thinking, “This all matches your eyes.”  
  
Dean blushes, which must match the heat Cas can feel filling his own cheeks. Neither of them say anything for a few long moments. Cas pretends to start looking around the mill for clues.  
  
“I, uh, I remembered what you told me that one time. About that garden in Heaven you liked.”  
  
It’s like a jolt straight to his heart, realizing Dean even remembered that. Cas tries to think of a way to respond, thrown off by the way Dean is looking at him now. So earnest. Almost hopeful, though Cas doesn’t know why.  
  
Before he can say anything, Cas’s phone begins to ring, _Highway to Hell_ blaring out into the silence between them. Cas fumbles for it. The moment, whatever it was, is dead.  
  
“Really Cas? You don’t strike me as the AC/DC type.”  
  
Cas huffs.  
  
“It’s Crowley. It reminds me not to answer.”  
  
He hits the reject call button.  
  
Dean is looking at the ground when he says, “He probably wants to talk to you about another Lucifer lead.”  
  
“Probably. But I’m working with you right now.”  
  
The smile Dean gives him is faint. It doesn’t come anywhere close to that happy grin he wore when he watched Cas look in awe around the room.  
  
“But this means you’ll be heading out again soon, right?”  
  
They’ve had this conversation, or at least abbreviated versions of this conversation, before. Cas is beginning to think he knows why Dean hates it so much when Cas leaves to look for his fallen brother.  
  
“If this is about me working with Crowley, you don’t have to worry. Our interests are aligned. We both want Lucifer in the cage. He’s not leading me down any unholy path this time around.”  
  
Dean lets out a frustrated groan.  
  
“What? No, that’s not it...”  
  
Cas is puzzled, and a little frustrated himself.  
  
“I just assumed having Lisa around has reminded you of the last time we worked together, and I wanted to assure you this is a very different scenario.”  
  
“No, man, I already told you, that’s not why having her around upsets me...”  
  
“Then what about it upsets you?”  
  
Dean rubs a hand over his face.  
  
“I don’t know. It was guilt at first, and I guess bitterness at how it had to end, but now it’s...” He gestures vaguely toward Cas.  
  
Cas narrows his eyes.  
  
“Me?”  
  
Dean groans again. “Dude,” he says finally, carefully avoiding looking directly at Cas. “She’s hitting on you.”  
  
“And that bothers you?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
Really, Cas already knew this. He saw it last night at dinner. Clearly Dean was affected by being so close to Lisa. Cas had foolishly hoped that was only because of the general awkwardness of the situation, not because he still had feelings for her. Feelings that Dean realized were unreciprocated because his ex had decided to flirt with Cas for some unknown reason.  
  
“Well,” he says, trying not to sound too disappointed at the confirmation that Dean does indeed still care for Lisa romantically, “I didn’t ask her to ‘hit on me.’ I’m sorry it upsets you.”  
  
“I’m not angry at you,” Dean says, sounding resigned. “About anything, okay? I’m not angry about Crowley, I’m not angry about Lucifer, I’m not angry about Lisa, here and now or six years ago. It’s just...”  
  
“A difficult situation,” Cas surmises.  
  
“Yeah. A fucking difficult life.” Dean chuckles humorlessly. “Cas, we did mind-wipe her.” He sounds like he’s almost pleading now. “That doesn’t make for a great start to a relationship. It would be kind of messed up to go into something where she doesn’t know the whole story.”  
  
So Dean is also upset because he feels it would be wrong for him to pursue Lisa now. That makes sense, Cas supposes, but it still hurts him that Dean’s thought about it at all, even though he knows it’s a ridiculous thing to hope Dean wouldn’t still love her. She and Ben meant so much to him in a time in Dean’s life when he really needed someone, needed a family.  
  
And Cas wasn’t there for him then.  
  
“It is a near insurmountable obstacle to beginning any romantic endeavor,” Cas confirms, kicking aimlessly at the dirt settled over the rotting floorboards. “It’s... disappointing,” he adds, because he realizes that’s how Dean must feel, even though it pains him to acknowledge it. He’s a good friend. He’s Dean’s best friend, his brother, apparently — at least according to Dean. That’s what brothers should do, support each other. Hold each other up through heartbreak.  
  
They would certainly not fall in love, even if they were never real brothers to begin with.  
  
His friend sighs heavily.  
  
“Yeah, Cas, yeah... I know. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”  
  
Cas isn’t exactly sure what Dean is apologizing for. Maybe they’re back to the guilt over erasing Lisa’s memories? But they’ve gotten past that, or so Cas thought. Maybe Dean’s sorry because he thinks that he was making Cas feel guilty? It’s like they’re coming at this conversation from two different places, but instead of meeting in the middle they’re swerving around each other at the last second. Cas doesn’t know why talking to Dean always has to feel like this, like neither of them can ever truly meet the other head-on. This conversation is both confusing him and making his all-too-human heart ache. He wants it to be over.  
  
“Dean, there’s no way I could restore her memories,” he says, wishing to make it clear that he would help Dean get his happy ending, if only he could. “I wish it were possible, but my grace just isn’t strong enough anymore.”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean says sullenly.  
  
“Though maybe I could explain to her what happened...”  
  
Dean’s face pales considerably and he stutters, “Uh, I dunno, Cas... I just... I don’t think that’s really.... it’s not... it probably wouldn’t be a good idea.” He’s facing Cas now, holding out both palms as if in offering. “Do you think it is?”  
  
_He’s nervous,_ Cas thinks. _Afraid if he tells her the truth she won’t take him back._  
  
Of course, Lisa would likely be very angry. Having your memories stolen is no small matter, which Cas unfortunately knows all too well. But maybe if he puts all the blame on himself, says that Dean reached the terrible decision because Cas forced his hand, maybe then she might come around in time. Then Dean could be with her, could be happy. Which should be what Cas wants.  
  
“I think,” Cas says slowly, “that the potential outcomes are numerous, but given time Lisa may be persuaded that it was for the best. Then she can decide whether to pursue a romantic relationship or not.”  
  
Dean cringes so slightly at this that Cas almost doesn’t notice. Cas assumes it’s his dread of Lisa turning him down cropping up again.  
  
“However, it’s ultimately your decision,” he adds.  
  
“What — why mine?”  
  
Cas shifts uncomfortably. He’s searching for a way to say _because you’re the one in love with her_ without actually having to say it.  
  
He settles on, “You’re her ex.”  
  
“Oh,” Dean says shortly. “So now we invoke the bro code.”  
  
That phrase has popped up multiple times in the now vast (and mostly useless) encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture Cas possesses due to Metatron’s meddling. He’s never grasped its practical applications, though.  
  
“I don’t know what that means,” he huffs, because he’s tired and he’s tried to offer Dean a new chance at a life with the woman of his dreams and her son, even though doing so feels equivalent to stabbing his grace with an angel blade, and Dean is still being so frustratingly obtuse.  
  
The beauty of the old mill seems significantly diminished when Dean mutters, “Forget it, Cas,” and turns away from him.  
  
This is not ending the way he’d expected. Cas had thought that maybe his offer to confess to Lisa would make Dean flash him that incredible smile, the wide, toothy one that means he’s truly pleased. Cas would willingly trade his own happiness for Dean’s, and for that smile, any day.  
  
Which is why he quickly adds, “I just thought it might be good to grow the family.” Cas says it so Dean knows that he understands what’s most important to him, that trying to fix Cas’s mistake with Lisa is no small offer. It’s a chance to give Dean back what he once had, a family beyond Sam and Mary, a life without monsters. Cas wants Dean to know he could have that again, maybe. If he wanted.  
  
Dean turns back to him.  
  
“Grow the family?”  
  
“You have Sam, will always have Sam. And now Mary is back. But from — ”  
  
“Cas, that doesn’t mean —” Dean tries to interrupt.  
  
“From what I’ve seen humans desire intimate companionship,” Cas soldiers on, “I’ve... I’ve begun to experience that myself, recently. That desire.” Dean looks away from him, swallows hard. He pushes forward, steps closer to Dean, pleading a case that he wishes he could just ignore, throw out of court. “It’s even worse now that I’ve lost my siblings. It’s... it’s very painful, Dean, to lose one’s family and still long for that... connection to someone else, especially if they’re out of reach. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.” _Especially you._  
  
“Cas.” Dean is blinking very rapidly, and Cas worries when he sees his friend’s eyes are watering. “That’s... You do have a family, you don’t need anyone else, we’re your family...”  
  
“I know, Dean,” Cas says kindly, but he regrets the turn this has taken. He only wished to communicate he understood Dean’s longing to get back what he’d lost. Cas never intended to make this about himself. “You told me that we’re brothers. It meant much to me.” And it did, even if it didn’t feel like quite enough.  
  
“But, that thing you said about companionship... Cas, wait, you’ve lost your siblings? I thought you were the one that convinced them to help God nuke Amara! Cas, what... what happened with the angels?”  
  
If he could think of a way to bring them back to Lisa, to get a final answer on whether to reveal the truth to her, Cas would do it right away, get it over with.  
  
As is, hearing Dean ask about the other angels pulls at something deep within Cas, something he’s tried, mostly successfully, to bury after Lucifer left his body. He can feel that spark of panic stirring up, and he can’t stop the flash of memories that begin chasing each other through his mind...  
  
_Sitting on a motel bed, telling Dean, “I’m afraid I might kill myself...”  
  
Angels falling, falling and it’s all his fault, he did this to them...  
  
Hannah, admitting he’s hated in Heaven, then dying because he couldn’t save her...  
  
Lucifer, wearing that predatory smile, moving like a knife carving through his head, whispering, “Don’t you just want to be useful, Castiel?”  
  
His brothers and sisters, wanting him to leave Heaven for good, agreeing to fight the Darkness on the condition that Castiel never return...  
  
“Do you think we see any daylight between you and the Adversary?”  
_  
“Cas! Cas!” Dean’s voice almost sounds like it’s just another one of those thoughts, but no, that’s not quite right. Dean wasn’t holding onto his shoulders tightly, propping him up, gazing at him with that concern written across his face, not in any of those terrible memories.  
  
He blinks slowly, trying to discern how he ended up on the ground.  
  
“Cas, look at me,” Dean is pleading, and now one of his hands is cradling the side of Cas’s face. Cas leans slightly into it. It feels so nice. “Where’d you go, man?”  
  
Dean isn’t letting go of him. His thumb is rubbing circles around Cas’s cheekbone. Cas tells himself not to get used to this.  
  
“I... it’s just flashes,” he starts to answer, then stops. He’s not sure how to explain these intrusive bursts made up of the worst parts of his life, but he knows he has to now that they’re apparently bringing him to the ground in front of other people.  
  
“They took a vote,” Cas hears himself say.  
  
That wasn’t what he’d intended to say, but he has so little control over his mind nowadays.  
  
Dean brings the other hand to rest on the back of Cas’s neck, pushed up into his hair. Cas tries to avoid thinking about the other terrible memory this reminds him of, _angry and feral under the curse, hitting Dean again and again..._  
  
“Cas!” Dean snaps, and Cas blinks back to reality.  
  
He worries he’s made Dean angry until he see his friend’s face. Dean looks afraid.  
  
“Cas,” Dean repeats, gentler this time. “What are you talking about, they took a vote? What does that mean?”  
  
It takes a valiant effort for Cas to focus in on Dean, on his lovely, worried face, on his hands, comforting in their soothing motions. He should explain this. It’s important for Dean to know the truth.  
  
“The angels,” Cas clarifies. “They told me, when they were torturing me about Metatron, while I was under Rowena’s curse... They told me they took a vote. To determine what to do with me.” Dean has stopped moving his thumb in that soothing circle. “They voted for the torture. They all hate me. Hannah... Hannah actually told me that. When I went back to convince them to join us against the Darkness... that’s when they affirmed that this vote included my banishment.”  
  
Cas stops, closes his eyes. He was briefly so happy, just minutes ago. Dean looked happy too, bright in this place full of greenery to match his eyes. They were happy before they started talking about Lisa. Before Dean asked about his siblings.  
  
_This is why we don’t talk about things._  
  
“Jesus Christ, Cas,” Dean says after a moment. Cas doesn’t open his eyes, can’t look at him. “I always knew they were fucking shitty, but this takes the goddamn cake, doesn’t it? Fucking hell...”  
  
“You don’t understand, Dean,” he says, eyes still closed against Dean’s anger, “what I’ve done to them.”  
  
“I don’t give a rat’s ass! You’ve saved all of them from some pretty terrible assholes, multiple times! Lucifer, Michael, Raphael, Naomi, Metatron... You’ve fought for them in every fucking war... You should be their goddamn hero! Nothing...” Dean grabs his shoulders and shakes him, and Cas finally looks at him. “Nothing you have done justifies this Cas, do you understand me?”  
  
“I disagree,” Cas says, and he moves back, moves away from Dean, who looks both hurt and angry. “I understand why they feel how they do. I don’t blame them... I just miss them. Sometimes.”  
  
“Cas, you have a family here, and we love you.”  
  
Dean has never said that before — never used the word ‘love’ with Cas. ‘Need,’ yes, ‘family,’ often. ‘Love’ is different. It stings, even though he knows it’s not meant to.  
  
“We should actually do our jobs,” Cas says, standing up, ready to move away.  
  
Dean follows the motion, catches Cas’s arm, says his name again.  
  
“Cas, do you —,” Dean starts, then stops. His phone is ringing. Dean pulls it out of his pocket and groans. “It’s goddamn Deputy Mouthy.” He levels Cas with a stern gaze. “We are not done talking about this.”  
  
Cas doesn’t respond. Dean answers the phone, says “Yup” and “We’re ready now” in a clipped voice, then hangs up.  
  
“But we didn’t even —”  
  
“Sam and I looked all over this place yesterday. We were never going to find anything new.” Dean starts to move toward the door. He’s walking stiffly, hands curled into fists at his sides. Cas knows he’s upset him.  
  
“Okay,” he concedes, “but wait.”  
  
Dean stops at the door and looks back at Cas with an almost hopeful expression.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You never said whether I should tell Lisa the truth. I just thought we might not have another chance to speak privately about it.”  
  
It seems like it takes Dean forever to answer. Cas waits in the silence, thinking that watching beloved stars burn out of existence over millennia is a less painful prospect than waiting to hear Dean say, _Yes, tell her so I can be with her._  
  
“Can we not deal with this right now,” is what Dean says. “I think we’ve got bigger issues on our hands here.” Dean sighs, runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up along the front. “I don’t think you’re in a good place for this, man.”  
  
Cas is confused as to why his being “in a good place” matters when it’s Dean’s future at stake, but he says nothing. Cas doesn’t want Dean to worry about him, but at least Dean seems to currently be prioritizing him over Lisa. He’ll take what he can get, selfishly, for as long as he can.  
  
He could tell Dean right now that he’s glad. Glad Dean cares, glad that Dean is his family, even if not in the way he longs for. Cas could even tell Dean what he truly wants — to be with Dean, really be with him — just to get it out in the open. To drop it in the crossroads they always seem to be standing at without ever meeting in the middle. To make it clear that no matter what, Cas loves Dean, and he will always love him in whatever way Dean allows. He could tell the truth, just so Dean knows, even if he chooses Lisa in the end.  
  
Cas doesn’t say any of that, though.  
  
“Okay,” he says instead. “Let’s go then.”

///

This case has turned into the biggest shitfest, and Dean doesn’t even know where to begin cleaning it up. And that’s really saying something, considering his utter shitfest of a life.  
  
They’re back in the room, waiting on Sam to call. Cas is taking a really long shower, which Dean isn’t even sure is necessary. He probably wants to get away from Dean. Even though it was his intention to talk to Cas once they were alone, clearly Cas had not wanted to extend their conversation from the mill.  
  
That leaves Dean to think about everything, and it’s not been an enjoyable pastime.  
  
There’s the case itself, which is confusing and open-ended, but hopefully Sam will fix at least some of that when he finally calls to tell them about his interview with Jeffords.  
  
There’s Ben, who Dean is still worried about, although he logically knows the kid is far enough away to be safe.  
  
There’s Lisa, who is staying three doors down, a painful reminder of Dean’s past failures as a boyfriend and a person. Lisa, who clearly has a thing for Cas, a thing that Dean is now gut-wrenchingly aware might be mutual.  
  
Then there’s Cas. Where to even begin?  
  
Cas is considering telling Lisa the truth, which has its own set of problems. He’s obviously considering that so he can potentially date her, which, frankly, breaks Dean’s heart to even think about.  
  
But why stop there?  
  
The guy clearly has PTSD. Now that’s he had the time to think about it — that panicked look on Cas’s face, the muttering about flashes, the way he seemed like he’d gone somewhere else in his mind — Dean recognizes the symptoms. The thing is, he and Sam have both suffered their share of trauma, but it’s not like they ever deal with it in a healthy, normal manner. So Dean doesn’t know how to help Cas.  
  
Then there’s the whole matter of the asshole angel squad disowning him, which doesn’t surprise Dean all that much. They swing so far between worshiping Cas and detesting him that Dean’s shocked they haven’t all developed whiplash. This is a downswing, clearly. But to disavow Cas like that — to vote on it, to publicly declare he’s hated by all of Heaven, to torture him... That’s what kills Dean.  
  
What’s worse is to know that really, it’s Dean’s fault the angels have abandoned his friend. Cas’s last-straw crime against divinity, stealing Metatron out from under Heaven’s nosy noses, was all about getting information on how to rid Dean of the Mark.  
  
It all boils down to this — Cas is lonely. Lonely, and he wants “intimate companionship,” which hey, Dean could have given him, if at any point in time he had taken his head out of his ass and admitted what now is becoming increasingly obvious — this love for Cas is not a new thing.  
  
Now that he’s recognized it for what it is, Dean can see his love all over their history together. He sees it in a ring of fire and the sting of betrayal. He sees it in all the bottles of Jack he drank when Cas walked into a lake. He sees it in the offering of a trench coat back to a long-lost friend. He sees it in the red-hot anger he felt at that horrible reaper, in the relief when Cas chose him over an army, in the blade he shoved into a book instead of the angel’s heart. He sees it in the long hours spent alone at a table in the bunker, going through every lore book they own and trying desperately to think of a solution, praying with no response, _Please come home. Please come home. We don’t need him. We need you. Please come home._  
  
God, Dean’s an idiot. Maybe Cas wouldn’t feel the same way, but Dean could have at least tried to tell him. Could have said "I need you" and shown Cas what he actually meant.  
  
But even if he had said anything, what the hell good would it have done? It’s not like Dean hasn’t said things to Cas before, things that were hard to say, hard to admit. _I need you_ is the Dean Winchester _I love you_ , and he’s said it to Cas multiple times now. Still Cas keeps leaving, keeps himself firmly in his own trajectory, circling just outside of Dean’s orbit, crossing paths just on the periphery. This, these last few weeks, might be the longest Cas has spent with the Winchesters, living in the bunker while he waits for Lucifer leads to pop up so he can leave all over again.  
  
And just now Dean told him "We love you" because at least the _we_ made it safe, and Cas still didn’t respond.  
  
Maybe Cas doesn’t believe it when Dean says that crap. Maybe Dean should have just been a better friend all this time. It’s got to be Dean’s fault, somehow. It always is, he knows this.  
  
But it feels too late to do anything now. Cas has developed a little crush on Lisa, which Dean of all people clearly understands. She’s beautiful, but more than that, she’s kind and she’s totally devoted to family. She listens, really listens, and looks at you like she can see your soul — which actually reminds Dean of Cas a hell of a lot. It makes sense why Cas would be drawn to someone like that, want someone like that. Cas doesn’t want to be alone. He wants to belong. He wants someone to look at him and hear him and accept him.  
  
_You’re devoted to Cas,_ the little voice in Dean’s head that always sounds like Sam says, _You love him and accept him._ But Dean shuts it down. He’s devoted to Sam. He’s still working on committing himself to Cas. Even though he wants Cas to feel at home and loved with him, his history clearly shows that Dean always places Sam above everything and everyone, no questions asked. It’s not healthy, Dean knows, and they’re getting better at not killing the world for each other, but Cas would only see the past there. Cas would assume Dean’s love for Sam eclipses any love for him, blocks out any light that might have been trying to shine around the Winchesters’ codependency complex.  
  
_And,_ Dean thinks morosely, _I’ve never been kind. Not kind enough, anyway. Not to Cas._  
  
It’s a shitfest, and it can’t get any worse. That is, until Dean hears the knock on the hotel room door.

///

Lisa. Of course it’s Lisa.  
  
It takes Dean’s brain a second to adjust to seeing her there, with her short hair and slightly older face, just like it has every time they’ve run into her. His heart seems to stop for a beat at the sight of her, and he wonders if that feeling will ever go away.  
  
He thinks of her in a dimly lit bar, laughing and shoving playfully at his shoulder. Of her dancing around her old apartment barefoot that first weekend they spent together, holding a bottle of wine like a microphone and singing Britney Spears songs. He thinks of her holding Ben close to her heart, rubbing his head and promising everything would be all right. Of her holding Dean late at night in bed when he felt like his grief was crushing him and he couldn’t breath, couldn’t speak, whispering that she would be ready to listen when he was ready to talk.  
  
Dean might not love her now. He might never have loved her properly, the way she deserved, all in. But he did love her for a long time, and she doesn’t even recognize him. It hurts, even though he chose this outcome.  
  
After he reboots enough to feel capable of speech Dean asks, “What can I help you with, Ms. Braeden?”  
  
“I was hoping to catch Cas,” she says, and before he can really feel like that has kicked him in the nuts, Dean takes a good look at her.  
  
Lisa is not a woman dressed to seduce. She’s wearing yoga pants and a ratty University of Chicago sweater she owned way back when they were together. There’s not a bit of makeup on her face. She still looks gorgeous, of course, because she’s a gorgeous person, but she also looks scared. Her eyes are wide and wet, and she’s clutching her cell phone tightly in one hand.  
  
“He’s uh, he’s in the shower,” Dean says. “Can I do anything for you?”  
  
She shrugs, then abruptly starts crying.  
  
Dean has never felt comfortable with crying women, not even this particular crying woman, so he does what he can remember helped before, when they were together. He steps forward and envelopes her in a soft hug, pats the back of hair, murmurs, “Hey, it’s okay,” over and over. She actually did this for him way more than he ever did for her, so he feels a little twinge of satisfaction that maybe he can finally give her something back.  
  
Lisa sniffs into his shoulder for several long seconds, mumbles “I’m so sorry,” before drawing in a deep breath and taking a step back. Her nose is red and slightly snotty, and Dean holds up a finger to tell her to wait a minute while he gets something to use for a tissue.  
  
Cas is standing in the open doorway to the bathroom in just a towel, carrying a pair of sweatpants he stole from Dean, an indecipherable look on his face. Dean’s momentarily put off his mission by the sight of the very bare-chested angel, still slightly wet from the shower. Has he ever seen Cas without at least two layers of clothes on? If Dean has, he can’t recall it right now.  
  
And Cas is, well, super hot, to put it mildly. Dean has always known Cas has a beautiful face, even if he’s avoided admitting that to himself for the most part, but it’s clear now that the rest of that body is not something Cas should keep hidden under his potato coat. Because _damn,_ Jimmy Novak clearly worked out, or maybe those pecs are Cas’s, shaped by all the fighting and running they do. And _wow, those hipbones sure are sharp, and his chest looks so tan and smooth, and is that a mole right above his left nipple? What would the rest of Cas look like if he dropped that towel?_  
  
Dean can feel the heat crawling across his cheekbones and settling someplace else lower down that he really doesn’t need to think about, because Lisa is standing in their doorway crying for some reason. Now’s not the time for his libido to kick up.  
  
“Get some clothes on, man,” he tells Cas, somewhat reluctantly. “We’ve got a problem.”  
  
Craning his neck slightly around Dean to look toward Lisa, Cas shakes his head minutely.  
  
“You should take care of this,” he says quietly, and then Cas is backing into the bathroom and closing the door behind him.  
  
“Damn it, Cas.” Dean groans under his breath. Just like Cas to leave him to deal with the emotional shit. Just because he can’t fly anymore doesn’t mean the guy won’t still nope out whenever he’s capable of it. Dean can still hear Lisa’s hitching sobs from the doorway. He grabs some Domino’s napkins left unused from their pizza lunch and heads out to face potential disaster.  
  
“Hey,” he says to Lisa gently, easing her out of the way with one hand so he can move out of the room and shut the door behind him. Dean hands over the napkins and she takes them gratefully, blowing her nose into an advertisement for $10 medium pizzas. “Why don’t we go sit over there?” He gestures toward the picnic table in the grass at the end of the parking lot, and she nods.  
  
Once they’re seated, she takes a deep, shaky breath and says, “I know they’ve found another body.”  
  
It takes Dean a second to register this.  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
Lisa looks at him blankly.  
  
“You didn’t know?”  
  
“Lisa.” He forgets to be formal. This feels urgent. “How did you know?”  
  
“I was going to come to your room. I wanted to... I needed to say something to Cas.” She looks away from Dean. “There were some other agents, or I think they were agents because they had suits, and they were there, knocking on your door. They seemed... angry, that you weren’t answering. One of them started talking about the latest body... I couldn’t help it, I had to know. So I asked.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “They seemed so surprised to see me, one of them actually answered. She said that someone found a body next to the river a county over. A boy, just a teenager. They think he’d been there for a day or two. Alone.” Lisa chokes out a sob. “Just....it’s just a few miles away from where Ben is.”  
  
In his mind, Dean can see an 11-year-old Ben, terrified as he tried to rescue his mother from a demon. The kid had cried that day, cried like Lisa is crying now as she says, “I’m afraid. Tell me I shouldn’t be afraid.”  
  
Dean can’t.  
  
“Have you called him?” he asks, trying to keep his voice as steady and professional as possible.  
  
“I tried, I tried, but there’s nothing. No calls are going through. I can't get any service out here. I just want to go get him. I need to go get him.”  
  
“When did these other agents come by?” he asks, reaching out to gently touch her shoulder, trying to calm her down.  
  
“Twenty, thirty minutes ago,” Lisa says. She wipes at her eyes. “They... they told me not to talk to you.” She stops and looks right at Dean. “They said they hadn’t heard of anyone else being assigned to this case. They said they were surprised when the sheriff told them you’d be here. They asked if I’d seen you and I said no. Why did I say no?”  
  
Dean pulls his hand back. He remembers that searching gaze well. She would look at him like that sometimes in the year he lived with them, when he was at his lowest points and could barely speak or when he was faking being okay so poorly the cracks were starting to show. She looked at him like she was trying to see under his skin, see how he worked. That’s how Lisa is looking at him now.  
  
“I trust you. I trust all three of you,” she says it firmly, like it’s an indisputable fact, and then seems surprised at herself. “I feel like... Like something bad is happening. And I know the three of you can help me, help me find Ben. Am I... am I going crazy?”  
  
Lisa laughs, slightly unhinged, half turning away from him.  
  
“Oh my god, you could be the killers,” she whispers, but shakes her head before Dean can say anything. “But you’re not. You’re the hunters. I don’t know why I know that, just as soon as you hugged me I thought, ‘Dean is a hunter, he’ll know what to do.’ And when I met Cas, he offered me a pretzel and I touched his hand and clear as day in my head I said, ‘Oh, this is the magic man.’ What... what does that mean? I tried not to think about it, but I was so sure I’d seen him before, just once. Why do I feel like I’ve met all three of you before when I know, _I know_ I haven’t?”  
  
Dean’s gotten snagged on different pieces of Lisa’s rapidly moving speech, and he doesn’t know where to begin. She’s looking at him pleadingly, begging for her answers with those big brown eyes.  
  
“You’re not crazy,” he whispers, unable to speak the words in a normal tone of voice. “We can help you. You do know us, but you don’t remember.”  
  
“What?” she says with a hysterical edge. “What do you mean I don’t remember?”  
  
Cas is there, suddenly, and Dean didn’t even hear him arrive. _Magic man indeed,_ he thinks bitterly.  
  
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Cas says, and he does sound sorry. “Dean, Sam just called. We need to talk about the case...”  
  
“No, Cas, we gotta run. You should start packing up the stuff. We’re probably...” Dean glances at his watch out of habit. “Oh, less than an hour away from getting made by the real feds.”  
  
“What is happening?” Lisa asks, or demands, again. Dean’s got to hand it to her, she’s not freaking out nearly as much as most people would.  
  
Dean looks at Cas, knowing that when the two of them are particularly in sync, they don’t need words to communicate. He needs this to be one of those times.  
  
Cas nods, maybe a little sadly, then heads back to their room to pack everything up.  
  
Dean takes a deep breath and faces Lisa.  
  
“We are hunters. Me, Sam, Cas. That... that wasn’t nothing, when you thought that. You have met us before.”  
  
Lisa shakes her head, mouth opening and closing as she searches for words.  
  
“I don’t remember —“  
  
“Right. You don’t remember, it’s not that you don’t _know_. I can’t explain it all now, Lisa, I wish I could. But you need to understand that we’re here to help. The things we hunt, they aren’t human. The real cops don’t know about them, regular people don’t know. We... we helped you, once.” _God, what a fucking lie._ “But Cas had to take away your memories of us.”  
  
“Cas took away my memories? What... how?”  
  
“He kind of is magic,” Dean says, and shrugs. Angel feels like too big of a bomb to drop right now. “Lisa, listen. I know this all sounds insane, and I promise I will explain everything to you, but right now we have to get out of here. We’ll find Ben and make sure he’s safe, I swear.”  
  
“No,” Lisa says, shaking her head. “No, I’m not letting you go alone after my son, I don’t... I don’t know you!”  
  
“I thought you trusted us?” Dean’s pleading now, both hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes. “I need you to trust us.”  
  
“I feel like I should,” she confesses. “But... you just told me your friend erased my memories!” Lisa’s voice is getting high and panicked, and he hopes she’s not attracting bystanders.  
  
So Dean decides to take a plunge.  
  
“Your name is Lisa Marie Braeden. Your birthday is March 22. You have an older sister named Laura. You’re allergic to shellfish.” Her face is paling, but he pushes on. “You love blueberry pancakes. You know all the words to the soundtracks of _Grease_ and _Saturday Night Fever_ because you have a weird thing for young John Travolta.”  
  
Dean pauses, just for a second, almost afraid to start the second part.  
  
“Your son’s name is Benjamin James. He loved baseball as a kid. He would do this weird little dance to ‘Born to Be Wild’ whenever it played on the radio. When he was six, he broke his arm after he fell off the monkey bars at school and the scar from the surgery is right here.” Dean points just under his left elbow. “You used to worry he was colorblind, he mismatched his clothes so much.” He laughs faintly. Lisa just stares. “Neither of you can sing worth a damn, but that never stopped you from trying.”  
  
Cas is back again, having arrived sometime during that speech. He has all their bags hanging from his hands, and he’s watching Dean and Lisa carefully. Dean wants to look at him, just for comfort, but he can’t turn away from Lisa. She’s taking deep breaths, like she’s drowning on dry land. He holds her shoulders tighter in an attempt to pull her up, pull her out of it.  
  
“It wasn’t...” She tries to speak, then closes her eyes briefly, takes another breath. “That didn’t come from some one-time meeting.”  
  
“No,” Dean says, “it didn’t. Do you believe me now?”  
  
Lisa looks between them. Cas, ever so stoic, just watches with that sad look on his face.  
  
“You will,” she says in a low, slow voice, “tell me everything. Both of you. But right now, I’m going to go get my bags, and we are going to find my son and make sure he’s safe.”

///

Cas relates Sam’s call while he and Dean drive east toward Ben in a hot-wired car (“You’re stealing that right in front of me?!” Lisa had asked, incredulous), Lisa following close behind in her Durango.  
  
The best news from Sam’s call, at least in Dean’s mind, is that Ben is safe, at least for now. The latest body was a local teenager. Sam got a call from the sheriff’s office about the victim, which also means that the real feds in town hadn’t, at that point, decided to tell the two-bit cops their suspicions that the agents they’d been handing over valuable evidence to might be con men.  
  
Of course, that brief security net is out the window once the FBI figure out that Dean and Cas cleared out their motel room and took off. They might try to pursue the imposters, or they might stay caught up in this case. Either way, Dean’s not taking any chances.  
  
At least Sam’s interview with Quinton Jeffords, convicted murderer of Lacey Parks, had been illuminating. Jeffords, Parks’ boyfriend, was arrested and tried on the basis that he had been the only one seen with Parks the night she was killed.  
  
Jeffords told Sam they weren’t alone.  
  
Sam sent Cas a portion of the recording of his interview with Jeffords, and Cas plays it in the car while Dean tries to focus on anything but Lisa’s headlights behind them and Cas’s hand so close to him in the middle seat.  
  
“We were out on a hike,” Jeffords says, voice slightly muffled in the playback. He sounds young. He was just a kid when he went to prison. “Lace liked to go out along the river at night. There’s this trail not far from town, right along the water, and not many people ever went out there. So that’s where we went. I, um... I remember us walking along, and Lacey’s behind me, and I’m messing with her, you know? Saying like, ‘Catch up’ and ‘Wow, who’s the experienced hiker here?’ Shit like that.”  
  
Jeffords pauses, and Sam says, “What happened next?” in his patient FBI voice.  
  
“I don’t... I don’t know. No one believes me when I say that, they say I killed her, but I didn’t! I just... I was turned away from her, when we started to hear these sounds in the woods along the trail. Branches cracking, brush rustling. Footsteps in the trees. Almost like someone was following us, you know? Lace was freaking out, whispering to me about it, so I told her to come up with me. I stopped to wait on her man, I swear. But it was fucking dark out there, and I’d been going around a corner. I looked back for her, and she wasn’t there. I could hear the sounds still, and they were louder, thrashing. I was fucking freaked out! It was like I was frozen. I could barely see in front of me, even with my flashlight, let alone see her. I should have.... I should’ve gone back for her, I fucking know that, I think about it every goddamn day. But then I ran. I ran off the trail to the river, I fell in...”  
  
“That’s why you removed your clothes?”  
  
“Yes! I didn’t want to drown, they were dragging me down. It wasn’t like they said, it wasn’t to get rid of her blood, get rid of the evidence. I was running! I... I didn’t kill Lacey. But I didn’t save her either.”  
  
There’s a long pause on the recording.  
  
Sam breaks in eventually.  
  
“Quinton, did you notice anything strange that night, on the trail? Cold spots, smell of sulfur, anything weird?”  
  
“No. Just the noises in the woods. I thought at first maybe it was an animal. But they told me only a human would do something like that. Kill someone for fun like that.”  
  
“And you never saw anything? Never saw what killed Lacey?”  
  
“No,” Jeffords whispers, so quietly his voice is barely audible. “But I’m telling you the truth, Agent Burke. There was something else out there that night.”  
  
Sam’s recording ends there.  
  
Cas tells Dean that Sam is convinced Jeffords was telling the truth, which Dean agrees with. Whatever killed Lacey Parks is dropping other bodies in near identical fashion, but there are a few things that still don’t stack up.  
  
“All these murders, they’re right by the river right? But Lacey Parks was actually found back further in the woods off the trail. She wasn’t right by the water like the others. And footsteps following them? That’s not the M.O. of a ghost, but it ain’t like a vamp, either. They’re silent hunters.”  
  
“Something else, then?” Cas muses. “And the drowning deaths are unrelated?”  
  
“Sam says Australian river monster.”  
  
“I... I think I disagree with him on that point.”  
  
Dean grins at Cas. “Yeah, me too. But god, the random times between kills still bugs the shit out of me. That doesn’t sound like anything I can think of.”  
  
“It might have migrated elsewhere those years in between? I can text Sam, ask him to look for similar kills in surrounding areas.”  
  
“Yeah, that’d be good. I still feel like we’re missing something here, though.”  
  
Dean taps the wheel, trying to think of another monster that might drain its victims of blood, when he catches sight of Lisa’s headlights in the rearview mirror again and his mind blanks.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
He jerks back to attention and has to slightly correct the car to get them back on their side of the road.  
  
“Are you all right? What were you thinking about?” Cas asks, and Dean wishes the burr of his voice weren’t so comforting. Wishes it were saying other things, not trying to convince him to open up about his myriad of personal issues.  
  
But Dean finds it a lot harder to lie to Cas about this stuff than he does when it’s Sam asking. So he answers honestly.  
  
“No, I'm not all right. This case is weird, Ben is out there in the danger zone, I just half-told Lisa the truth.” He sighs. “On top of that, you know, is everything else in our lives. Mom moving out of the bunker. Away from me. Lucifer out and about, doing who the hell knows what, with fucking Crowley of all people, er, demons, chasing after him. British Men of Letters and the fucking feds on our tails. Sam might be the only one that I’m not worried about, for once.” He huffs a laugh.  
  
“You’re worried about me?” Cas asks. He sounds confused, and damn if that doesn’t break Dean’s heart.  
  
“Yes, Cas, fuck. Of course I am. You’re having panic attacks, your family gave you the boot and you waited a year to tell anyone. And I worry every friggin’ time you’re not at the bunker, when you’re out on some mission.”  
  
“Dean —”  
  
“I know, I know. You’re a big boy, you can take care of yourself,” Dean interrupts. “But let me help, Cas, Jesus. You don’t have to do everything alone. You have me. I...”  
  
“You love me?”  
  
It feels, for a moment, like Dean’s in a vacuum and all the air has just been sucked out. He’s not sure if he can remember how to breathe. He looks at Cas, too long for someone driving a car down a highway, and sees his own shock mirrored on Cas’s face.  
  
“I only meant —” Cas starts, and Dean says, “Of course I do,” before he can stop himself.  
  
Silence follows.  
  
Dean turns back to the road and counts in his head, a habit left over from when he was a kid and just starting to hunt. John Winchester would say, "You hear me fire, you stay in hiding for five seconds, come around the back and shoot. Got it boy?' And Dean would nod like _yes sir,_ and count in his head. _One._ Beat. _Two._ Beat. _Three._ Beat. _Four._ Beat. _Five._  
  
He does it now.  
  
_One. I told him I loved him.  
  
Two. He didn’t say anything back.  
  
Three. But_ he _asked.  
  
Four. What just happened?  
  
Five. What does this change?  
_  
It’s definitely been longer than five seconds when Cas speaks.  
  
“Of course,” Cas repeats after Dean, and nods like yes, he just wanted to confirm it. “We’re... brothers.”  
  
He says it like it’s something he almost forgot, like those words alone weren’t nearly impossible for Dean to squeeze out. Like he doesn’t understand the type of love Dean actually wants to offer up, and it sure ain’t brotherly love. Sam does not equal Cas; Cas does not equal Sam. Dean has always felt intense love for both but never quite worked out how it wasn’t the same. Never let himself think about how it wasn’t the same. Shoved those feelings in the cabinet of “Things Dean Winchester Doesn’t Think About.”  
  
Dean’s starting to hate that damn cabinet.  
  
He knows rationally that he can’t expect Cas to see past his bullshit and his _‘I need you’_ s and _‘we’re family’_ s to pick up on the real truth. Cas is a friggin’ alien who’s worn a human suit for all of eight years, and Dean, certified homo sapien since 1979, only figured it out like two days ago. He needs to explain it to Cas.  
  
But if he explains, and Cas still rejects him, it would kill him. He knows it.  
  
He thinks of the soft, fond smile Cas gave Lisa, and rejection definitely seems like a plausible response.  
  
Besides, doesn’t Cas deserve better than him anyway? Dean’s a mess, and he knows it. It would just be wrong to expect Cas to continue blindly following the Winchesters forever, never getting a chance to experience a real life. A good life. Because no life with Dean could ever be good. He makes the people around him hurt, always.  
  
Dean feels so trapped in this circle of thought that he doesn’t respond to Cas at all. They drive on in silence. 

///

Sam decides to stay in Kuna after all, even after Dean updates him on the Lisa and Ben situation, so he can use the motel internet there to take a closer look at the news stories surrounding Lacey Parks’ death. He’ll start the long drive to meet them first thing tomorrow morning. Cas doesn’t know whether to feel relieved he’ll have more time alone with Dean or stressed to lose their best buffer.  
  
They’re at the campsite where Ben and his friends are staying, and Dean is pacing along the side of the stolen car, an old hatchback that Cas hopes they’ll have time to return once Sam arrives with the Impala. Lisa insisted on going to Ben’s tent alone, still wary of Dean’s in-depth knowledge of their lives. She left the two men in the parking lot to stew.  
  
It’s dark out now, but Cas can see multiple campfires flickering through the trees, can hear the laughter and chatter of friends and families eating evening meals in front of their tents. It seems like a nice thing to do, to go and spend time with nature and the people you love. He sees the appeal.  
  
“I’m gonna go check the perimeter,” Dean says, and before Cas can argue or insist he accompany him, Dean is stomping through the brush at the edge of the campsite and into the woods.  
  
Cas makes an aborted gesture to follow his friend before thinking better of it. He can’t sense anything out here, which may be a result of his weakened grace, but hopefully means no monsters or spirits are prowling about. Dean has a gun with silver bullets, the car’s tire iron and an angel blade all stuffed into the pockets of his jacket and the back of his belt. He should be fine alone.  
  
Besides, Cas could use a bit of time to think about what just happened.  
  
What had they been talking about that had caused him to ask Dean if he loved Cas? He can’t recall the conversation now, a blight in his otherwise perfect memory. It was as if everything in the space just before those words had been swallowed whole by the monster that was that question — _You love me?_  
  
Cas didn’t know what moved him to put into words this need he’d been living with for so long, buried deep under his human skin, under his bones, his heart, his true form, his grace itself. He’d never put a name to what he wanted, what he felt, until he was human and watching Dean drive away from him at a Gas-N-Sip not far from here. Cas knew in that moment, angel, human, or anything between, Dean would not return this depth of affection, and so Cas would never ask it of him.  
  
He would never ask of Dean anything so impossible.  
  
Yet, less than ten minutes ago by standard human time Cas had blurted out, “You love me?” like any other lovestruck fool, and Dean had answered, “Of course I do.”  
  
Cas had tried to stop the words he’d seen forming in Dean’s mouth, if only because he knew they would hold nothing but bitter heartbreak for him. He’d tried to explain, to say he knew Dean loved him as an adopted member of the Winchester family, as his most reliable, useful friend.  
  
That’s not what Dean said.  
  
_Of course I do._ No qualifying arguments attached. Dean said it firmly, fiercely, as though this statement had always rang true in his own mind. _Dean loves Cas, of course he does._  
  
For a moment, Cas wanted to say something monumental in return. Wanted to say something an angel should never say to anyone but their Father.  
  
_I love you,_ Cas wanted to say. _And you’re the only being in this universe I love like this._  
  
Then he’d actually thought of what it would mean to say such a thing, and Cas realized that Dean’s love for him surely is as different from his love for Dean as one galaxy is from the next. There’s so much space between them, an incalculable divide. Perhaps an angel could cross it, but a human never could.  
  
Dean loves Cas like he’s loved others within the realm of family — Bobby, Ellen, Jo, Charlie, Kevin. Cas is only special in that he’s earned the distinction of being called Dean’s best friend, and he’s grateful for that, of course.  
  
Maybe it’s for the best that Dean’s love for Cas has reached its apex. Cas has watched, again and again, as the wildfire love the Winchester brothers possess for each other has consumed them, their friends and family, the world. They’re only just now learning to wield it in the right way. Cas doesn’t want Dean to love him that much, in the way that could only ever seem to bring Dean pain.  
  
He knows he should feel honored to be placed on a tier in Dean’s heart anywhere near Sam, but he also knows (at least rationally) that to feel that tied to someone else, how Dean and Sam used to be, so wrapped up in each other there was no distinction, is unhealthy and miserable.  
  
Irrationally, Cas often wishes Dean would pull him closer, that they would be more tied together, bound to one each other more tightly than in the loose knot they so often form.  
  
Angels are rational creatures above all else, however, so while in his head Cas may have confessed his all-encompassing desire to place Dean Winchester above every soul, living and dead, and every angel, and every god, for all eternity, _amen,_ aloud he’d said, “Of course. We’re... brothers.”  
  
Between the “we’re” and the “brothers” were millions of words of affection in every language that has ever existed, and Cas kept them all contained within himself. He barely had room to hold it in. He’s much bigger than his human form appears, it’s true, but Cas’s love for Dean is incalculable.  
  
_“We’re...brothers.”_  
  
It doesn’t fit how Cas feels. It’s too small.  
  
But Dean never responded, and Cas can’t fathom what that might have meant. Maybe it was silent agreement, maybe he’d slipped back into his worry over Ben and Lisa, maybe it was meant to be comfortable silence. Sometimes Cas understands Dean better than anyone else ever has, and sometimes he understands Dean not at all.  
  
This is one of the latter times.  
  
Cas leans against the hatchback lazily, a human habit he’s picked up sometime in the last eight years. He waits for Dean or Lisa to return, and he curses himself for being so reckless with his words. He shouldn’t have asked for confirmation, even if it made him feel lighter just to hear that “Of course I do.”  
  
Not that long ago, Cas had felt fairly certain Dean didn’t care for him much at all. He reminds himself for the thousandth time to feel grateful for all he has, for the relationship he has with Dean as it stands, to not push for anything more.  
  
He sees Lisa walking back along the trail to the campsite, her arms drawn around her body protectively, actively avoiding looking at him. Seeing her gives Cas the jolt he needs to stop thinking of himself and Dean, and to start thinking of Lisa-and-Dean once again. Cas might have felt heartened in the mill when Dean declined to say yes to his offer to tell Lisa the truth. But now Dean’s begun that story himself, and Cas knows that changes everything.  
  
_She’ll be angry, but then she’ll realize what kind of man he is. That he’s the best of men. She’ll want him in her life. Dean deserves to have all his family back, including those I took from him years ago._  
  
This is what Cas reminds himself of as he waits for Lisa to reach him.  
  
Lisa and Dean. That’s what’s best for Dean, but more importantly it’s what Dean wants, so that’s his new mission.  
  
She approaches Cas cautiously and takes a seat on the hood of the car, leaving just enough space between them that he couldn’t touch her without moving over.  
  
“Is Ben all right?”  
  
Lisa sighs. She looks away from him and back toward the campground.  
  
“He’s fine. They were all outside the tent, trying to cook hot dogs. Him and all his friends.” She fixes her gaze to the ground. “I didn’t go up to him. Didn’t let him see me. He’d resent me for freaking out over nothing, embarrassing him in front of them.” Lisa rubs at her reddened eyes.  
  
“It wasn’t nothing,” Cas says. She finally looks at him. “There is something out there. You had every right to be concerned. But he’s all right, and we’ll make sure he stays safe until our job here is done.”  
  
He’s not expecting her to say, “You have a very kind face, you know?” but that’s what Lisa says.  
  
Cas must seem taken aback by this, which he is, for Lisa quickly qualifies, “It’s what made me trust you in the first place. You looked kind of sad, but kind.” She looks away again, gazing back through the woods toward the campfires. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry if I was pushy, with the whole dinner thing and then giving you my room number. Just, you looked nice, and I’m kind of lonely. Ben is my whole world, you know, and most of the time I don’t even know if he wants me around anymore. I just thought maybe I should try to get something more for myself for once. So I meet a nice guy who works for the FBI and I think, 'I’ll just see where things go.' God, what a stupid idea.” Lisa laughs, but there’s no humor in it. Then she sighs. “So now we’re here in a parking lot waiting on a monster who kills kids. God, I just... This is my son I’m trying to protect here, and clearly I don’t know the half of what’s going on. So Cas, tell me. Was I right to trust you?”  
  
When she turns her brown eyes back to him her gaze is piercing. Cas can see Lisa’s fear there, her love for her son, her hope that these random men will help her.  
  
“You can trust us to protect Ben,” he says, because to tell Lisa to trust them, to trust him and Dean when she doesn’t know everything yet, would be wrong.  
  
“Who are you?” Lisa asks, and she doesn’t sound angry or concerned like she did earlier. She sounds curious.  
  
Cas decides he owes her at least a piece of the truth.  
  
“My real name is Castiel,” he says, watching her face carefully. “I’m not really an FBI agent.”  
  
Lisa almost snorts her laughter.  
  
“Clearly. Castiel... not Agent Just Cas Stein?”  
  
Cas smiles in spite of himself.  
  
“No. But Sam and Dean do call me Cas. So much so that it feels like more than a nickname now.”  
  
“You don’t have a last name.” Lisa states this like a fact instead of a question.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Do you actually have a niece? That part seemed real.”  
  
“Well, sort of,” Cas says. “Claire isn’t actually my niece, but I feel like our relationship is roughly equivalent to that particular familial bond.” He thinks for a moment. “That is, when she’s not angry with me.”  
  
Lisa slides off of the hood and moves a bit closer to him, maybe to read his face better in the dim light. She’s studying him like he’s a puzzle she needs to figure out, but she’s missing a few crucial pieces.  
  
“When you... When you touched me for the first time, back at the motel,” Lisa says, then pauses to think for a moment. “I knew you. I recognized you, I mean. I thought of you as the ‘magic man’ in my head?” Her voice tilts upward in confusion, slightly embarrassed. “And Dean says you’re the one who erased my memories of him and Sam.”  
  
“Oh.” Of course Dean would say that; it’s the truth. But Cas wasn’t expecting to have to take on the full burden of what happened to the Braedens quite so soon.  
  
“He said you had to.”  
  
Well, that changes the context a bit. Cas can remember feeling like he did have to, as he walked into that hospital room without Dean. Lisa was awake then, and she started to ask why he was there, but Cas just silently put two fingers to her forehead and took it all away — every memory of Dean, any lingering pain he’d missed when he healed her earlier that day. He immediately did the same to Ben, before the boy could panic about the stranger touching his mother. Then he left, thinking, _I fixed it. Maybe Dean will forgive me._  
  
Dean didn’t.  
  
Cas wonders now if he really did have to do what he did, and thinks, _No, but Dean asked, and I was desperate to give him some reason not to hate me._  
  
Aloud he says, “It was complicated.”  
  
Lisa huffs. “You’re going to have to do better than that. You can start by telling me exactly how you managed to erase my memories.”  
  
Cas has started to hate saying this, but there’s no other way to answer but, “I’m an angel of the Lord.”  
  
Lisa is staring at him, a mixture of disbelief and awe on her face, when Cas hears Dean tromping back through the woods toward the car. He turns to his friend, grateful for the distraction.  
  
“Find anything?” he asks. Dean, clearly focused more on Lisa than Cas, swallows at the sight of her and shakes his head mutely. He walks over to stand between them, stepping back to face Cas and Lisa as they lean against the car.  
  
“Nothing.” Dean’s eyes keep darting nervously to Lisa, who Cas can see has stiffened her expression and body posture, physically closing herself off. “Is Ben all right?”  
  
Lisa repeats what she told Cas earlier, omitting the part about not wanting to embarrass her son.  
  
“Good, good,” Dean says, letting out a relieved breath. “Well, everything is good here, but Cas and I are gonna stay the night, keep an eye out on things. We saw a motel just down the highway a few minutes from here. You should get a room for the night, get some rest.”  
  
“No,” Lisa says.  
  
Dean blinks at her, and Cas thinks, _Here we go._  
  
“No?” Dean repeats.  
  
“Yes, _no._ Listen here pal, I might be having flashbacks to a time when we all knew each other, but I don’t actually know a thing about either of you now,” Lisa says, pointing her finger at Dean. “You tell me my memories of you, which apparently were numerous, have been wiped clean.” She then jerks a thumb toward Cas. “He tells me he’s an ‘angel of the Lord.’” Dean starts a little at that, looking at Cas, who shrugs. _What could I say?_ “So this is what we’re going to do. The two of you are going to tell me everything. No detail spared. We’re going to make sure whatever is killing those kids comes nowhere near my son, and we’re going to do it together. And if you have a problem with that —” Lisa pulls an unfamiliar business card out of her pocket (one without a room number written on it, Cas notes), “— I can always call the real FBI agents and tell them exactly how to find you.”  
  
Dean’s mouth opens and closes in a way that makes Cas think of guppies. He looks at Cas, silently pleading for help with his eyes. Cas feels mostly impressed by Lisa’s threat. She’s earned his respect in more ways than one by now.  
  
“I think she’s right,” Cas says. “We owe her the truth.”  
  
No matter how much it might pain him to tell her, to potentially lose Dean to Lisa again.  
  
Dean doesn’t say anything at first, looking at Cas with a sadness that flits across his face so quickly Cas isn’t sure he would have noticed it if he weren’t an angel. Then Dean turns to Lisa.  
  
“Okay,” he says gruffly. “But this is gonna take a while.”  
  
Lisa crosses her arms over her chest.  
  
“I’ve got all night.”

///

Lisa is, predictably, pretty pissed.  
  
Dean eventually lost track of the number of insults she hurled at him before she left to go sit in her car. They got pretty creative toward the end. Cas whispered as she stormed away, “What does she mean by ‘We weren’t your Stepford family side project?’ Or what about ‘your Truman Show experiment?’ I have heard of these films, but I don’t understand...”  
  
Dean, not feeling like explaining to Cas the nuances behind pop culture references, cut him off with a gruff, “Can we just not talk right now? Please?”  
  
So they’ve been sitting in silence for at least the last three hours, taking turns patrolling the perimeters of the campground occasionally. The sun’s starting to rise, and Dean still feels like a jackass in the light of day.  
  
Apparently, learning that you’d lived with someone for a year, loved them and welcomed them into your family with open arms despite all their numerous hang-ups, only for them to have their friend with superpowers take away all those memories without your consent, is a really shitty thing to do. Not that Dean didn’t know that already.  
  
On the plus side, which is actually a minus side for Dean, Cas emerged from the conversation mostly unscathed. He’d kept trying to put more blame on himself, but Dean refused to allow it.  
  
Even if it kills him to push Cas toward Lisa, there’s obviously a connection there. Every time he walks up on the two of them they’re having some important-sounding conversation.  
  
So he told Lisa that Cas didn’t know about Crowley’s plan for the Braedens, over Cas’s protests that he should have been able to stop it. Dean told her that Cas trusted Dean to do what was best for Lisa and Ben. That Cas mind-wiped them only because Dean asked him to. Cas tried to say he should have known better, and Dean cut him off. Lisa just stood there, arms crossed, shaking slightly in anger. She didn’t say anything.  
  
Lisa wished Cas a terse goodnight before leaving them, but she ignored Dean entirely.  
  
In the end Dean took the brunt of her anger, and he figures it’s no less than he deserves. He tries to tell himself it doesn’t matter if she hates him, doesn’t matter if Cas is free to be with her now that the truth’s out. He should want them both to be happy. They deserve to be happy. They’re both good people. They care deeply. They’re brave and selfless and willing to put themselves aside for the better of others. They’re the best people, actually, that Dean loves or has ever loved.  
  
Cas and Lisa. He’s just going to let it happen. What other choice does he have?  
  
He sits on the hood of the stolen hatchback, picking at a scab on his hand leftover from a hunt last week and watching the sun rise through the woods. Dean supposes it’s sort of beautiful — the golden rays filtering in through the green of the trees, casting a subdued glow and reflecting the pattern of the leaves in shadows on the ground. He can hear the river from its path a half mile back down the road, a light roar like a continuous rain.  
  
Dean also hears Cas’s footsteps before he sees the angel step through the brush at the edge of the parking lot, back from another walk around the campsite. Dean knows if this were a normal hunt he would be out at the river, trying his best to incite the vampire/ghost/Australian water monster into attacking him. Getting it over with. Fast and bloody.  
  
But this is Ben and Lisa. He’s not leaving either of them unprotected in the midst of danger, not again.  
  
He feels rather than sees Cas settle on the hood next to him.  
  
“You should sleep,” Cas says. The angel presses a feather-light touch to his forehead, those two healing fingers, and Dean does his best not to lean into it, this barest of physical contact. The scab he’d been running his nails over disappears, a very faint tingle, that ineffable feel of Cas’s grace, all that’s left in its place.  
  
“Can’t do it,” Dean says. “Not with them here.”  
  
“I know you want to protect them, but humans need —”  
  
“An average of seven hours of sleep, I know. I’ve told you a million times, Cas, I’m not an average human.”  
  
Cas laughs, just a short huff of air. Dean smiles in spite of himself.  
  
“I’ve never considered you average. Far from it.”  
  
Dean carefully keeps his eyes on the sun poking through the forest around them, trying to keep the blush in his cheeks down. It’s next to impossible when Cas says shit like that.  
  
“Lisa isn’t an average human, either,” Cas says, slowly, carefully, like he’s picking his way through a mine field, and suddenly Dean hates where this conversation is going. “She’s stayed awake all night, too. Looking out for trouble. I can see her watching the woods from her car.”  
  
“Right,” he says shortly, then reminds himself, _Cas and Lisa. Don’t be so damn selfish._ “She’s always been pretty great. Real strong for Ben.” Then, to be honest and fair, he adds, “And for me. Once upon a time.”  
  
“I know,” Cas says. “Dean, I... there’s something I need to tell you.”  
  
Great. He sounds so nervous, with a hint of resignation. That tone of voice never works out well coming from people Dean loves. First it was Bobby, telling him that John might not want Dean and Sam around him anymore before he got a gun out and shot at John Winchester’s retreating car. Then it was Sam, quietly explaining that he’d applied to Stanford and was leaving Dean alone with their angry, alcoholic father. Then Cassie, asking him to pack his bags because she didn’t want anything to do with the supernatural world Dean lived in. His mother, back from the dead, but still wanting to live her own life, which apparently doesn’t include Dean in it all the time, or even very much of the time.  
  
And of course there was Lisa, breaking things off to keep herself and her son safe.  
  
Actually, that tone is all about the people he loves leaving him. Not that he’d blame them. So Dean is pretty sure he knows what’s coming next — _Dean, I don’t want to dishonor any code of conduct between male companions, but I’ve fallen for the remarkable woman that you used to have intercourse with, and I believe she returns my feelings. I intend to have high quantity, high quality, very physical sex with her and to visit you less and less as I make my new, human life. I will continue to completely overlook your own deep affections for me in favor of doing what you actually taught me to do — going after a hot chick — because you were too self-loathing and self-repressed to simply recognize and confess your love for me before it was too late._  
  
Maybe Cas wouldn’t be that harsh. Definitely not that aware. But still.  
  
“What is it?” Dean tries not to let the pain bleed through, he really does, but he can’t help it if his voice reflects that he’s bracing himself for a blow.  
  
_Here it comes, the Dean I’m Leaving You Behind speech._  
  
“I watched over you that year you spent at the Braedens.”  
  
Cas spits this sentence out so fast, so unlike his normal, measured speech, that Dean can’t quite process what was just said.  
  
“Come again?”  
  
Cas is looking away from him, into the sun, and his profile lit by the dawn light is so striking that Dean wishes, just briefly, he could pause this moment, and if anything bad comes after it he wants to erase it and just wait here. Watching Cas work out what to say next, the sun on his face, biting his bottom lip, blue eyes sort of watery and altogether perfect.  
  
“I watched over you,” Cas says, slower this time. “At the Braedens. I’m sorry, I know how you hate spies, but it seemed like the best way to keep you safe.”  
  
“I —” Dean takes a second to collect himself, relieved to move back from the cliff of despair he’d been standing on the edge of, but super confused about where this is going. “Wait, what?”  
  
“I watched over you —,” Cas starts for the third time, but Dean cuts him off.  
  
“No, I get it, but just... How? I mean, when? For how long? What... what did you see?”  
  
Cas looks at the ground, clearly ashamed of himself, and Dean is not having that shit today, not in this beautiful sunrise with this gorgeous guy ( _Jesus, I am gone_ ), and Lisa and Ben still safe and nearby. Not over something this old. Cas shouldn’t feel guilty about any of this anymore. So Dean grabs his friend’s shoulder and leans down a bit, just enough to catch a side glance from Cas. It works like clockwork, has since he first did it in Heaven’s green room, when he convinced Cas to defect from the only family he’d ever known. Cas looks at Dean with wide, worried eyes.  
  
“It’s okay, man,” Dean says. “Water under the bridge, right? Just... I didn’t know. I want to know.”  
  
Cas nods. He seems to steel himself for the conversation by straightening up, running his hand over his familiar blue and white tie.  
  
“I decided I should check on you, every now and then, when I could get away from the increasingly volatile situation in Heaven. Angels are not exactly experts at the applications of free will.” Cas rolls his eyes so hard at the memory that Dean swears they should get stuck in the back of his head, but it’s such a Cas expression that he can’t help but grin fondly. “So I spent most of my time with them, but I did try to make sure you were all right. You, you occasionally were... missing me, might be the best way to put it.”  
  
Dean blinks, trying to take in that information.  
  
“How could you tell?”  
  
Cas shrugs.  
  
“Prayers.”  
  
“I didn’t pray to you, Cas.” Dean shakes his head. “Maybe I should’ve, but —”  
  
“You were angry, I know,” Cas rushes in. “We didn’t part well, after Sam and the cage and the archangels. I didn’t perceive the complications my departure would cause at the time. But you didn’t have to pray directly for me to sense when you were, um, longing. For me.”  
  
_Fuck._  
  
“Don’t worry!” Cas says, like he can read Dean’s mind, and _shit, maybe he can._ “It actually happens quite often, with you. Much more so then with anyone else, but of course it’s because we’re such close friends, correct? One would miss their closest friends often when they’re not physically nearby?”  
  
“Right,” Dean says, the word moving uneasily past his lips.  
  
“Of course,” Cas muses, “it is stranger when I sense it while we’re together, but that might be my grace just picking up on too much. Over-sensitized due to proximity.” Dean can feel another vicious blush coming on. “In any case, I worried about you, so I would go to the Braeden’s, invisible, just to be sure you were adjusting well.”  
  
“I wasn’t,” Dean says, and he’s not sure he’s ever been this blunt about his year of civilian life before. “God, I was a mess. I drank all the time, slept when I wasn’t drinking for like the first six months. They deserved better.” Dean hates to think back on how much he screwed with the Braeden’s easy-going, monster-free life that year. “But hey, why didn’t you just come see me? I mean like visibly, like, ‘Hello, Dean,’ if you were there?”  
  
Cas swallows, such a human gesture it makes Dean’s heart ache. The angel sitting next to him is so familiar, yet so removed, from the angel that left him alone in the Impala after Stull.  
  
“I was going to.”  
  
“But?”  
  
“The first few times, you were always with Lisa or Ben. Lisa was trying to care for you, Ben just wanted your affection. I didn’t want to intervene. I understood, even then, that human lives exist in a delicate balance, interconnected. I always felt that to reveal myself would throw that balance off.”  
  
Dean knows there’s more to this, but he waits quietly for Cas to continue. His friend has drawn his trench coat slightly tighter around himself. An angel in his own little cocoon.  
  
“Then, Raphael threatened me for the first time. I came down, fully intending to ask you for your help standing for free will in what I knew would be an angelic civil war.” Cas is staring at Dean intently now, and Dean feels like he can’t breathe. They haven’t gotten there yet, but Dean has just realized exactly what this means. “I landed on Earth, right next to the Braeden’s, ready to request your service, again...” Cas shakes his head ruefully. “And you... You were raking leaves. You looked normal, like you were finally settling into the life your brother wanted you to have, that I believed you wanted to have. And you’d already given so much, how dare I ask for more?” Dean hates that resolution in Cas’s eyes, hates what he knows comes next. “I made the deal with Crowley that day.”  
  
What can Dean say to that? _We both fucked up royally, and I never even knew how much until just now._  
  
But there’s one thing he has to ask.  
  
“Cas, that means... when I asked where you were, you were right there?”  
  
Dean hates his traitorous tear ducts. He always tells them _no chick flick moments,_ and they betray him every time.  
  
Cas shrugs. He looks so small in that stupid, baggy coat. Dean knows he’s not small. Cas is multitudes of light wrapped in human packaging. But he looks small right now.  
  
“To tell you the truth at the time would have been a perfect example of ‘too little, too late,’ I believe.” Cas smiles wryly and hums a few bars of a tune Dean recognizes. “You know that song? I believe it was popular in the late 2000s.”  
  
Dean can’t help but groan and laugh at the same time. He knows Cas is fucking with him, and he appreciates the attempt at levity.  
  
“Damn it, Cas. No JoJo lyrics. Friggin’ Sam and his crap musical education. It’s just... it’s a saying.” He shakes his head, tears that feel both happy and sad running down his face. “I’m an idiot. Of course you didn’t come to me for help because you didn’t want to drag me into that crap. Jesus. You gotta stop being so damn self-sacrificing, man.”  
  
Cas gives him a clear That’s Very Hypocritical of You, Dean look. Dean just wipes at his eyes.  
  
“Water under the bridge?” Cas asks, and the hope in his voice breaks something in Dean. He can’t believe Cas thinks Dean would hold this against him, after all this time and all they’ve been through. _Actually, Cas should probably be mad at me,_ Dean thinks.  
  
“If you want, yeah. It’s my mistake there, though. Fuck, I should’ve known.”  
  
“You couldn’t have possibly known. Humans can’t sense me in my invisible form.”  
  
“Cas, missing the point.” Dean puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes lightly. “I’m... I’m trying to apologize. For not trying to talk to you about this, for judging you so harshly at the time. I didn’t know.”  
  
“I didn’t tell you,” Cas says. “So I’m sorry, too.”  
  
“Water under the bridge.” Dean hasn’t moved his hand from Cas’s shoulder. “We’re a couple of dumbasses?”  
  
Cas grins, and Dean thinks it’s the most beautiful sight, even better than the sunrise.  
  
“I prefer stubborn, in this case.”  
  
“Right. Less dumb, less ass?”  
  
Cas’s smile grows. Dean smiles back, feeling the dried tracks from his tears crack under the movement.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
He squeezes Cas’s shoulder again, a reassuring motion, and then reluctantly moves his hand back to his own side. They both turn to the tree line and the ever-rising sun, and before Dean can stop himself he says, “Wait, why’d you want to confess all this in the first place? I mean, I’m glad you told me — we should definitely talk more about this kind of stuff — but, uh, why’d it come up?”  
  
“Oh,” Cas says, and he shifts uncomfortably next to Dean on the hood. “It was just to tell you that I did still visit, after the raking leaves time. Only a few times, because of the war, but... You seemed happier. With Lisa and Ben. You played catch with him. You kissed her good morning and good night. You all made breakfast. You looked like a... a family.” And damn if the way Cas’s voice catches on ‘family’ doesn’t make Dean feel like tearing up again. “I just wanted to say, I knew even then that the two of them were special to you. So I understand why you’d want to be a family with them again, and I want to help you win Lisa back, because she is a good person. I’ve seen that for myself, lately. I want you to be as happy as you possibly can be, because you deserve it.”  
  
And Dean realizes like a bolt of lighting straight to the head that once again he has completely missed the mark when it comes to Cas and what his motivations actually are.  
  
_Wait, what?_

///

Lisa interrupted Cas and Dean’s early morning conversation, and Cas is trying to forgive her for it. He’s gotten remarkably good at that — forgiving people for intruding on him and Dean — because Sam does it all the time, but this conversation was one he needed an end to, an answer to. Dean’s actions this week, his open jealousy, his general skittishness, have led Cas to believe he wants to be with Lisa again, and Cas is what’s in the way. But every time they’ve approached the subject of Cas helping Dean win Lisa back, they get interrupted.  
  
It’s getting tiresome, and Cas is sick of all this getting dragged out. He needs to hear Dean actually say he wants to be with Lisa — to rip that band-aid clean off, to use another human expression.  
  
Then Cas can gently rebuff Lisa, push her in the direction of the man who does love her, and Cas will... He’ll live, he supposes. Miserably, but live nonetheless, with the shred of satisfaction that finally, finally he could give Dean what the man needs most — love and family, beyond that of his ever-complicated bond with his brother and mother. And maybe when Dean and Lisa and Ben are happy together, then Sam will feel okay with finally venturing out into his own life, and maybe Mary will want to be around her elder son more when she feels like she doesn’t have the full weight of his sometimes overbearing sense of familial obligation on her shoulders.  
  
It’s a perfect ending, really. For everybody except Cas.  
  
_No,_ he tries to tell himself, _it’s the best you can hope for, too. To ensure Dean’s happiness with someone else. You were never an option. You and Dean were never an option._  
  
Lisa had interrupted them to gather breakfast orders, saying she planned to return to the motel and pack but she’d be back with food. She instructed the men to stay where they were, saying “Don’t be creepy and weird about it, but make sure Ben doesn’t head off alone.”  
  
She was clearly uncomfortable during the short conversation, speaking to Cas and ignoring Dean almost entirely. Cas knows she must feel rather betrayed, finding out her former lover left her in the manner he did, and he has the feeling that this relationship might be harder to fix than he originally thought. He ignores the treacherous side of him that whispers, _Don’t try and force it. Don’t try to mend it. Let her leave so you can be happy. So you can keep him for yourself._  
  
Dean and Cas don’t pick back up on the topic of Lisa because Sam calls right after she leaves, with news that finally seems to actually clarify the case. They sit in the hatchback to take the call, Dean’s eyes moving over the woods around them, looking for any signs of trouble.  
  
“So get this,” Sam says over the speakerphone, and Dean rolls his eyes. “I called the Swift family last night, and the mom says Hannah was cremated. And the only object she was super attached to, that her spirit might cling to, is a doll that the family actually cremated with her. Weird, I know.”  
  
“Hannah, the little girl who drowned? Sam, Cas and I already kinda figured out this isn’t a ghost deal. The stomping in the forest after Lacey Parks? Monster.”  
  
If Cas could see Sam right now, he’s sure the younger Winchester would be making what Dean calls his “bitch face.”  
  
“First off, you’re wrong, Dean, and I’m gonna get to why. But second, I’m actually following up on every lead and doing all the legwork for this case while you’re pathetically navigating the most awkward love triangle of all time.”  
  
Dean’s face reddens and he begins to sputter, “What... You don’t even... Shut up, bitch!”  
  
So Sam must know that Dean still cares for Lisa but also that Lisa is apparently flirting with Cas. Cas thinks that about covers the concept of a “love triangle.” Metatron’s pop culture dump included The Hunger Games series and, unfortunately, the Twilight series.  
  
“Real mature, Dean. How’s that going for you, by the way?”  
  
“Sam, I’ve been trying to help him win back Lisa,” Cas interjects, because it would be nice if this weren’t all on his shoulders. Sam could help, and maybe with backup Cas would feel less like he’s tearing his grace out of his body with a rusted spoon every time the topic comes up. “It is proving to be a difficult task. She’s very distrustful of him.”  
  
Sam is silent for several long seconds. Dean oddly looks like he’s on the verge of breaking the phone, he’s holding it so tightly, his eyes shut and face scrunched in apparent pain.  
  
“Dean, what the fuck,” Sam says, voice dangerously low. “This is not what I meant when I said, ‘Get your shit together.’”  
  
“Sam,” Dean snaps, very unkindly. Cas is a bit shocked at how poorly both brothers are treating each other at the moment. “Back to the fucking case.”  
  
“Fine,” Sam says, just as testily. “This is all your own damn fault, though, for not explaining anything to Cas!”  
  
“What?” Cas asks, lost. Both Winchesters are often mildly difficult to follow, but it’s usually their rapid-fire inside jokes and odd pop culture references or just their blatant lies that Cas finds hard to weave his way through. This feels like he’s missed something huge, something no one has even talked about in front of him before. “You’re not explaining what to me?”  
  
“Nothing, Cas. It’s nothing,” Dean says, rubbing a hand over his face so Cas can’t read his expression. “The case, Sam, please, I’m begging you.”  
  
Dean sounds genuinely upset, and Cas wishes more than ever he was fully human, and had grown up a human, so he could understand Dean better, so he could know what to do to help him. Though often Cas thinks that not even a lifetime of human experience could make it any easier for him to read Dean Winchester.  
  
“All right, all right,” Sam’s voice is soft, a peace offering. “The case. So, like I said earlier, about many things but mostly about this — you’re wrong, Dean. It’s a ghost. I’m like 70 percent positive.”  
  
Dean sighs theatrically.  
  
“Seventy percent is a C, Sammy. Thought you were one of those straight A suck-ups.”  
  
Cas believes it’s Sam’s guilt over snapping at Dean earlier that causes him not to make a similarly snide comment in return.  
  
“Just hear me out,” he says. “Because it’s about to get good.”  
  
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Dean mutters.  
  
“So Hannah Swift wasn’t the only drowning victim, right?”  
  
“Right,” Cas says. “Wendell Perkins drowned around six months ago, though his body hasn’t been found.”  
  
“Which isn’t great for us,” Sam says, “because I’m pretty sure Wendell Perkins is our ghost.”  
  
“The timing of that is —”  
  
“Dean, hear me out,” Sam repeats. Dean looks to Cas, who nods his agreement. “Perkins died six months ago, in the river. The people killed here recently have all been found along the river, each one downstream from the last.”  
  
It dawns on Cas what Sam is getting at.  
  
“Maybe his body, or parts of it, are moving downstream slowly, getting stuck in the mud and rocks at the bottom along the way,” Cas theorizes. “The ghost is attached to the body, or even an object that was on his person when he drowned. It would be moving, too.”  
  
“Right! So Melanie Cross crashes her car by the river. She’s injured, but alive. Perkins’ ghost finds her and kills her. Brock Anderson is smoking pot in the mill right over the river. Perkins’ ghost finds him and kills him. The third victim, a teenager named Caleb Harrington, was night fishing. And —”  
  
“Perkins’ ghost finds him and kills him,” Dean interrupts. “We see the pattern. But Sam, the blood. And Lacey Parks was killed eight years ago. Come on, how do you explain that?”  
  
“I’m getting there,” Sam sounds excited. “It wasn’t the ghost of Perkins that killed Lacey. It was just Perkins!”  
  
“Wait, you’re saying that Perkins was a killer when he was alive?” Dean asks, and Cas can see him put the call with Sam in the background of his phone as he pulls up Safari and types “blood drained deaths northern USA unsolved 2008 -" into Google.  
  
“Yes,” Sam says, “a fucking serial killer. Guys, I found at least four similar murders, one more in Idaho but then two in Montana and one in North Dakota. All unsolved. Want to guess Wendell Perkins’ occupation during that time period?”  
  
Dean groans as he scrolls through the results on his phone. “Long-haul trucker? It’s always long-haul truckers.”  
  
“Exactly! Lacey Parks looks like the second kill, and the closest to home. But the others were along routes that Perkins would have run for his employers. It matches them perfectly, actually. And the blood draining, that could mean a number of things, all pretty messed up. But I did call Perkins’ old boss, too, and he said the guy was like weirdly fixated on cults and blood magic rituals. Like, he acted like it was just academic, but his boss and coworkers felt really uncomfortable around him. Guess he grew up in some compound in the ‘60s — one of the ones that celebrated the Manson murders. He probably saw some fucked up stuff there and was trying to recreate it as an adult. As a witch.”  
  
“Samantha, you’re too damn excited about this. Take an Ambien or something.”  
  
“You’re just mad I figured it out while you’re busy babysitting your ex-girlfriend’s kid,” Sam says, but he still sounds good-natured. Cas will never understand the younger Winchester’s particular obsession with serial murderers, especially given that his day job already involves so much death and gore.  
  
“I’m mad ‘cause we’ve got a ghost and no body. Scratch that, a serial killer ghost with no body who probably knew some particularly nasty witchcraft,” Dean responds. “How are we supposed to gank the son of a bitch?” He groans. “I friggin’ hate witches.”  
  
This is where Cas knows he can be useful, and the feeling is a relief.  
  
“I can take care of it,” he says. “If we see the ghost, I can smite his incorporeal form. He’ll be destroyed just as effectively as if you’d salted and burned his body.”  
  
Dean grins at him as Sam says, “Perfect. Well, I’m headed that way. We can try to lure Perkins out tonight. End this thing.”  
  
Dean says goodbye to his brother and hangs up the phone. Cas hasn’t forgotten what Sam said about Dean hiding something from him, but Dean looks so pleased they’ve figured out the case that he can’t bring himself to ask him what Sam meant.  
  
“This is good,” Dean says, leaning his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes. “Lisa will get Ben out of here today, and we’ll go hunt this fucker tonight. Get everything wrapped up all at once.”  
  
Cas would push the Lisa topic more, except he doesn’t want to, not at all, and sometimes his selfishness does win out.  
  
Instead he watches Dean as his friend’s face beginning to slowly slacken, his eyelids fluttering slightly, jaw loosening. He stayed up all night, and Dean really needs the sleep. Now that he feels a bit of resolution coming, a bit of relief, he might actually get some. Cas could maybe use some sleep too, but he’ll gladly stay awake to watch over the campsite and Ben, and more importantly to watch over Dean.  
  
“You sure you’re good to take him out?” Dean mumbles, just when Cas is sure he’s finally drifted off. His eyes are still closed. “Know your grace’s not so hot right now.”  
  
“It’ll be fine.” Cas picks at the peeling upholstery on his seat. “Don’t worry about me.”  
  
“Always worry about you,” Dean murmurs, and Cas smiles, just slightly. He looks over to respond, but Dean has clearly fallen asleep.

///

After Lisa returned and the three of them shared a stilted, silent breakfast in the hatchback, Dean and Cas explained to her that they now knew what was likely killing the teenagers, and as long as Ben stayed away from the river at night he’d be fine. Lisa was obviously relieved — she planned to go get Ben before nightfall, just a day earlier than her original schedule. She told them she would stay in the parking lot of the campsite anyway and call them if she saw anything out of the ordinary.  
  
Dean doesn’t think the feds will be sniffing them out this far downriver, not yet, and they still have the hatchback instead of the Impala the local PD would recognize, so he and Cas spend most of the day cruising the highway, stopping at a diner for lunch in search of coffee and pie, picking through terrible Idaho souvenirs at gas stations and local trinket stops, waiting on Sam. Cas buys Dean apple pie with money Dean wasn’t even aware the angel had, and he returns the favor and buys Cas a postcard with some mountains on it to send to Claire.  
  
If Cas has to take some time to call Crowley and discuss their next step in hunting Lucifer, Dean tries not to let his fear of abandonment get to him. After all, Cas is choosing to be with him here and now.  
  
They don’t talk about Lisa and Dean anymore, thank Chuck. He doesn’t think he could take it, doesn’t know how to just tell Cas, _Hey, actually I thought you had a crush on her and I was going to just let that happen, but now I have some hope that you really have no idea how I feel about you. I could just say “I love you, Cas. You, not Lisa,” but I suck at feelings and there’s no way in hell I could ever get all that out._  
  
The fact that Dean basically admitted last night to Cas that he loves him doesn’t get brought up, either. Obviously. He figures he can just work all this out when Lisa and Ben are safely on their way to California. If he can even find the balls to do it then.  
  
For now, just having the day with Cas is nice, doing nothing but idly checking out back roads and small towns in Idaho, acting like they don’t have a job where tonight they’ll probably get chucked into the river by an angry spirit.  
  
They plot their plan for the night while they drive. It’s pretty simple. Probably too simple, if Dean really thinks about it. They’re just going to start walking along the river just downstream from where the last body was found and hope against hope they run into the ghost of Wendell Perkins, and Cas can smite him without Sam and/or Dean getting gutted and sacrificed to whatever demon gods Perkins probably worshipped while he was alive.  
  
Dean’s already been gutted to please demons enough to last a lifetime, thanks.  
  
He has been thinking about something else, something he’s debating asking Cas about. Lisa had wished them goodbye after breakfast, complete with a stiff “Thanks for looking out for Ben” directed to Dean. It’s pretty painfully clear she doesn’t want to see him again, doesn’t want him around Ben at all, but she did pull Cas aside to briefly talk to him before they left. Dean’s dying to ask what she said.  
  
He can imagine a variety of scenarios there — she thanked Cas for being a cool guy, she let him know her offer to sleep with him still stood, she urged him to call her... Actually, Dean hates most of these scenarios. But since Cas has apparently decided to work the Dean-and-Lisa angle when Dean himself had felt resigned to the Cas-and-Lisa angle, now he just really wants to know what Cas said in response to whatever Lisa told him.  
  
Dean’s used to this crippling feeling, the feel of hobbling toward what he wants without ever quite reaching out for it. He could so easily put the feelers out there, ask Cas what he and Lisa talked about, clarify that no, Dean doesn’t actually want to get back together with her (not that she’d ever let him close to her son anyway). He could, but he won’t.  
  
_I keep the status quo too well,_ Dean decides. He doesn’t want to push Cas away, so he’s not gonna freak the guy out by confessing his deepest feelings. Lisa and Ben will head to California today, he and Sam and Cas will take care of this ghost, and then Cas will meet up with Crowley who-the-fuck-knows-where. Cas will still call him almost daily and visit occasionally, and Dean will continue to pretend he doesn’t feel a lot more than friendship toward the angel.  
  
It’s not the best case scenario, but it saves them all from the worst — the one where Dean tells Cas “I love you” in no uncertain terms, with no “we” or “family” thrown in the sentence as a buffer, and Cas freaks out and decides to take Lisa up on her offer for really bendy sex.  
  
Yeah, Dean can just picture that, and it’s simultaneously arousing and heartbreaking in such equal measure that his dick is definitely confused.  
  
_Stop thinking about Cas and Lisa having sex,_ he orders himself as Cas counts change for gas, his lips moving silently in motions that definitely don’t bring to mind other, more erotic activities. _Stop thinking about Cas having sex,_ he commands both his upstairs and downstairs brain while Cas sucks loudly on the straw in his Slurpee that he demanded they buy at the Gas-n-Sip around dinnertime. _Goddamn it, stop thinking of yourself and Cas having sex,_ he thinks desperately as Cas spills some of the damn drink on his pants and starts rubbing the back of his hand right next to his crotch.  
  
The Dean-and-Cas-have-sex scenario is by far the most tempting, and it’s hard (in more ways than one) to stop thinking about it.  
  
Because earlier, when they were waiting for Lisa to get packed and pick up breakfast, Dean fell into a pretty deep nap right there in the front seat (the pros of growing up in a car — you can fall asleep anywhere). And while he was sleeping, with Cas right the fuck next to him, watching over him, Dean had a vague, sort of hazy dream that mostly involved him pushing Cas against their motel room wall and then trying to tear off Cas’s button-down with his teeth while grinding his erection against Cas’s leg. All the while, in the dream, Cas was just continuously moaning in Dean’s ear, with these soft, breathy gasps mixed in whenever Dean would get a button pulled off and would suck a kiss on his chest, and it’s frankly a goddamn miracle that Dean did not come in his pants.  
  
Wet dreams. They should be restricted to awkward teenagers.  
  
Now Dean can’t help but start to daydream the end of that particular scenario, and Cas is still right there, sitting next to him, eating sunflower seeds and talking about how tragic it is that most humans don’t know the difference between edible and inedible berries anymore. His rough, deep voice is distracting, and not in a good way, because while Cas is actually saying, “Dean, I cannot believe that you and Sam have never learned to identify moonseed,” Dean imagines him saying something more along the lines of “Dean, I cannot believe how fucking amazing this feels,” punctuated with some good, deep groans and filthy hip rolls while Dean sucks a line of hickeys down his neck.  
  
And then Sam, that good old cock block, finally, blessedly, calls to say he’s twenty minutes out.  
  
Dean turns the car around to meet his brother and wishes, for the first time in his life, that he had no dick at all, then immediately takes that thought right back.

///

Any time Dean thinks the universe (or God, or angels, or demons or whoever) have punished him enough, he soon finds he’ll have to endure more torture.  
  
So when Sam called and he was so sure they’d finally get back to the case, Dean counted himself blessed that he could (mostly) put away his thoughts of dry humping his best friend to focus on the task at hand.  
  
But now that Dean and Cas are pulling into the parking lot of the campground, Dean can clearly see Lisa’s Durango, still sitting there where she’d left it parked earlier today.  
  
“Fuck,” he says, long and low under his breath.  
  
“Dean?” Cas asks, but then he looks at the parking lot and sees the car. “Oh.”  
  
“Yeah, oh.”  
  
Sam is there too, standing next to the Impala, which Dean is happy to see arrived in one piece at least, and talking to a very agitated-looking Lisa.  
  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Dean mutters, and Cas just nods gravely and says, “Fuck indeed,” which lifts Dean’s spirits for like a second before they come crashing down again.  
  
“— sure he didn’t get too far. We can spread out,” Sam says as they walk up to the Impala. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”  
  
“Everything okay?” Dean asks, fully aware that of course everything is not okay, because when is it ever?  
  
“Ben’s gone,” Lisa blurts out just as Sam is opening his mouth, likely to say the same thing. “I went to the campsite to pick him up, and his friends said he left to take a walk. Alone. Over an hour ago.”  
  
Dean sees Cas and Sam exchange a look out of the corner of his eye, but he focuses on Lisa. If she thinks they’re worried, she’ll really freak out.  
  
“Okay,” he says, “Sam’s right. We’ll just split up and look for him. We’ve got some time before sundown. Everything’s going to be okay.”  
  
Lisa sniffs and rubs at her watery eyes, but she says, “Okay. Jesus, I just can’t believe I didn’t go get him sooner, just so he would think I’m a cool mom...”  
  
“Hey.” Dean places both hands on her shoulders, steadying her and forcing her to look at him. “He’ll be fine. We’re professionals, remember?”  
  
Lisa nods a little shakily.  
  
“Well, I don’t remember, but you have told me,” she says, and even attempts a small smile. Dean can’t help but smile back, thinks _that’s my girl_ in an absurdly fond moment. She’s always been able to pull it together when she really needs to.  
  
“There’s a trail circuit from camp to the river and back,” Sam says. “The other boys pointed out which way he went, right?”  
  
“Yes,” Lisa says. “I’d like to go that way.”  
  
“Sam and I will take the other route at the fork,” Cas says as Dean steps back away from Lisa. Dean looks at him, but Cas’s eyes are on the ground.  
  
“Are you...” Dean starts to protest, almost asking, _Are you sure you don’t want to go with me?_ But he lets the rest of that sentence die on the tip of his tongue. Sam looks at Dean, eyebrows raised, like he’s waiting for Dean to man up and say what he’s really thinking. Luckily Dean’s used to disappointing both himself and Sam.  
  
Lisa, clearly focused solely on finding her kid, says, “Let’s go” and takes off toward the trailhead at the edge of the camp. The men follow behind in an uneven line, Sam close to Lisa and Dean falling back a bit to walk next to Cas.  
  
Cas is staring ahead stoically, per usual, and Dean bites back the urge to ask him what he’s thinking. They walk in silence to the fork, the only sounds the crunching of leaves and twigs under their shoes. Then they split off, Lisa not slowing down to wait on Dean, and he loses the sounds of Cas and Sam walking away to the ambient noises of the woods.  
  
Dean catches up to Lisa and risks a look at her profile. She seems focused, walking quickly. He feels a little bit of relief, thinks _hey, maybe we don’t have to talk —_  
  
“Would we have stayed together?” she asks abruptly.  
  
“What?” Dean asks, thrown off guard.  
  
She sighs. “If I hadn’t gotten hurt and made you think you had to erase my memories to keep me safe. Would you have tried to make it work between us, tried to win me back? Would you have tried to stay with Ben and me?”  
  
He knows the answer easily. He’s always known it, even when he was twirling her around the living room, Ben watching and laughing from the couch. Even when he felt happy with her, he knew.  
  
“No. I’m sorry.”  
  
Lisa just shrugs like it’s no big revelation. Like she expected that answer. Maybe she feels the truth without even knowing it.  
  
“You don’t have to be. Not for that. Sometimes things just don’t work.”  
  
Dean thinks back on all the times he passed out drunk in her bed, all the times she asked him to leave his old life on the doorstep for Ben’s sake. Every time he let them down.  
  
“We didn’t work. You knew, I knew. We just tried to pretend for a while. Not that I didn’t want us to work, for real. I did really care about you and Ben. But the life I lead doesn’t lend to happy endings.”  
  
Lisa purses her lips.  
  
“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe you’re looking for them in the wrong place.” After a few seconds pause she adds, “You do have to be sorry for getting Cas to make us forget you, though. I’m still pissed.”  
  
“Understandable. And I am. Sorry, I mean.”  
  
They continue to walk down the path in an uncomfortable silence for a few more minutes, both scanning the trail and the surrounding woods for signs of Ben, when Lisa says, “I’m not going to tell him about you.”  
  
This time Dean doesn’t need to ask what she means.  
  
“He’d be heartbroken,” she continues. “Ben is... Well, you remember him. He’s a more sensitive kid than he lets on. He cares about people really deeply. And he has issues with feeling left behind.”  
  
“I get that,” Dean says, because he does.  
  
“It’s my fault, I think,” Lisa says, voice dropping lower, like she’s ashamed. “I always wanted him to have a dad. I would date these guys and think every time, maybe this one. It’s got to hurt him when it never works, when they keep promising him he can stay in touch but they never follow through.” She swipes at her eyes with her sleeve. “So he can’t know you’re just another one of those guys.”  
  
It’s weird concept for Dean to think about, because to him Lisa and Ben have always represented the apple pie life that slipped through his fingers, but to them, even if he had let them keep their memories, he was just another man trying to fit into their family when he didn’t belong.  
  
“I won’t say anything,” he says. “Sam and Cas won’t either.”  
  
Lisa looks at him with something approaching gratitude.  
  
“Okay,” she says. “That’s good.”  
  
“How is he, though?” Dean asks, before he can lose the courage to do so. “Still a baseball stud?”  
  
Lisa laughs a little.  
  
“Ben’s good, yeah. He moved to third base his sophomore year. He won’t play in college, though. He’s going to Ohio State. Wants to be an engineer.”  
  
Dean smiles.  
  
“He’d be good at that. He used to help me work on my car. He’s got a knack for fixing things.”  
  
“Oh, I know. I make him fix anything that breaks around the house. The dryer, the disposal, the jammed doors.” She lists the items off on her fingers. “He has this tool belt he looks adorable in, but he’d kill me if he heard me say that in front of anyone else.”  
  
Dean laughs.  
  
“Yeah, I bet he hates that.”  
  
They walk a few more feet in silence.  
  
“I hope he’s okay,” Lisa says quietly. “I don’t know what I'll do if he’s not okay.”  
  
“He is,” Dean reassures her. “This thing operates at night, and look — we’ve still got daylight. He’ll probably be back at the camp by the time we’ve walked the trail, just waiting on us.”  
  
“I guess you’re probably right.”  
  
He looks at her, glad this talk seems to have distracted her from worrying too much and wanting to distract her more. “What about you, Lis? How are you doing? Not just right now, I mean with life.”  
  
She shrugs, like it’s unimportant.  
  
“I’m fine. I just got a promotion. Now I’m the head of the gym where I work, which has been great. And... I don’t know, I’m training for a triathlon. Watching Ben play ball or going to his robotics team competitions. I have a lot of friends where we live now, and we get together and talk about our kids and our jobs and our future vacation plans on the weekend. It’s not an exciting life, but it’s nice.” Lisa sighs. “I do worry about what I’ll do once Ben goes to school. I stopped dating for a while, but I’ll admit I’m afraid I’ll be lonely and directionless once he’s gone.”  
  
Dean, having never had a child of his own to devote his life to, doesn’t know how to respond.  
  
“That’s kind of why I hit on Cas so blatantly,” she adds. “I felt like hey, I might as well try this because what do I have to lose? And he just seemed safe, you know?”  
  
“Yes and no,” Dean says, feeling surprisingly honest. “He’s got a good heart, but I’ve also seen him smite demons and go toe-to-toe with a horseman of the apocalypse — and win. Oh, and one time he obliterated an entire diner full of monsters right in front of me. So he can be pretty friggin’ scary.”  
  
He realizes he’s rambling a little when he catches the sight of Lisa’s openly shocked face.  
  
“Cas really is a good guy,” Dean adds hastily, then sort of regrets it. He doesn’t want to make Lisa feel even more infatuated with the man he’s secretly in love with.  
  
“Of course, just the smiting demons and the horseman thing...”  
  
“Pestilence. It was Pestilence.”  
  
“Fuck,” Lisa says.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“An angel,” she says. “That’s something. I can’t believe I believe it, actually.”  
  
Dean laughs, maybe a little bitterly.  
  
“Believe it.”  
  
“You know,” Lisa says, “I never pictured angels as matchmakers. I thought that was more of a cupid thing.”  
  
Dean, not willing to explain to her that cupids are real and naked and also angels, just asks “What?”  
  
“He’s trying to set us up,” Lisa explains, gesturing between them with one hand as she gingerly steps over a log in the middle of the trail. “He told me this morning.”  
  
_Oh. So that’s what they’d been talking about earlier today._  
  
“Right,” Dean mutters. “I’ve kind of figured that out.”  
  
“I’m guessing you already know that’s not going to happen.”  
  
“Brain wiping is kind of no-no for future suitors, huh?”  
  
“Exactly. Not just you, I mean I couldn’t really see myself with Cas after that, either.” Dean’s heart lifts slightly as she says that, and he watches with a dopey smile as Lisa picks her way through a narrow part of the trail, stomping down the brush with her boots. “But Dean...”  
  
He has to duck to narrowly miss a low branch she’d accidentally sent flying back toward his face.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I don’t think his heart was in the setup. He sounded pretty miserable when he told me I should be with you, actually.” Lisa glances back at Dean, face impassive. “You know, for all my failed relationships, I can tell when a guy is into me. And he’s not into me. So whatever was upsetting him about that scenario, it wasn’t about me. Just food for thought.”  
  
Lisa is still walking ahead, but Dean’s stopped, standing in the middle of the trail. He can hear his heart pounding in his ears. He knows he needs to keep moving, to focus on Ben, but he also needs just a second, just to let that sink in.  
  
Cas is miserable. Dean is miserable. Neither of them want Lisa. Which must mean...  
  
_No,_ Dean thinks, jogging to catch back up with Lisa, _you can’t do that right now. Focus on Ben._  
  
He reaches her and slows down, and she looks at him from the side of her eyes with a sly smile. Dean tries to control his blush, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and looking away.  
  
In one of the pockets his fingers brush against something soft. Confused, he pulls it out.  
  
The black feather from the woods.

///

Cas can tell Sam is holding back something, and he assumes it has to do with whatever Dean was keeping from him earlier. The Winchesters and their secrets.  
  
But the sun is inching behind the trees, and Ben is the priority right now, so Cas doesn’t ask Sam to explain his earlier conversation with his brother. Sam talks about his interview with Jeffords and gives Cas interrogation tips, which Cas does his best to listen to while also doing his best not to think about Dean and Lisa, walking alone in the woods.  
  
Cas is very studiously not worrying about them when Sam suddenly lets out a startled, “Ben?!”  
  
And there, on the trail in front of them, a familiar teenage boy with a head of messy dark hair is huddled on the ground. Sam and Cas take off running to him, and Sam reaches him first. Cas had worried that maybe they might be too late — he can hear the river, so it must be close, and the trail is beginning to darken — but Ben looks up as they approach, his face drawn in pain.  
  
He still manages to say, “Who the hell are you?” as Sam kneels down next to him.  
  
“Ben, my name is Agent Sam Burke.” Sam flips open his fake badge quickly, probably to hide the fact that it actually says “Clem Burke.” “And this my partner, Agent Cas Stein. We’re with the FBI. Are you alright?”  
  
Ben looks between them, clearly confused and distrustful. Cas notices he’s holding his right ankle.  
  
“You injured yourself?” Cas asks, pointing to it.  
  
“Yeah, I... wait, FBI? The guys seriously called the FBI on me for this? I haven’t even been gone that long!”  
  
Sam shakes his head and smiles.  
  
“No, we’re here on another case. But we did run into your mother, and she’s very worried about you. We offered to help her find you.”  
  
Ben groans and puts his head between his knees.  
  
“Fuck, that’s so embarrassing.”  
  
“There’s possibly a killer in these woods. She had every right to feel concerned.” Cas knows he shouldn’t be so blunt, because after all Ben is still just a kid, but he feels the need to defend Lisa. Sam shoots him a glare he usually reserves for Dean when he’s being particularly hardnosed toward a witness. Cas just shrugs.  
  
Ben does a look a little frightened now, so maybe he’ll be kind to his mother when they’re reunited.  
  
“A killer? Fuck... Do you think he’s close? I fell into a rut, twisted my ankle. I just don’t know if I can run from some psycho.”  
  
Ben holds up his right leg slightly. His pant leg is drawn up, and Cas can see the large purple bruise blooming around the swelling joint. He could definitely heal an injury that minor, but if Sam is keeping up the FBI charade Cas knows he has to as well.  
  
“Ouch.” Sam draws out a noise through his teeth in sympathy. “We’re going to help you walk back, okay? You’re with us now, so there’s no need to be worried.”  
  
Together they help pull Ben to his feet, the teenager hopping and wobbling to keep weight off his right side. Cas is closer to Ben’s height, so he lets the boy loop an arm around his shoulder for support.  
  
Sam looks back at the way they came and then asks Ben how far he walked before he got hurt. Ben bites his lip in pain as he looks both ways down the trail. Cas thinks of a much younger Ben, showing Dean the scar from an old arm injury to prove how tough he was, with Cas standing there a few feet away, invisible and aching. He hopes this Ben, the older Ben, can put on a similar tough front.  
  
Whatever Ben’s answer was, Cas missed it, but they turn back the way Ben came from, so it must be the shorter route. Unfortunately, it’s also leading them closer to the river, and Cas can see how Sam’s mouth tenses as they move along the trail, the sky darkening steadily.  
  
They don’t talk much, though Cas occasionally asks Ben if he’s good to continue, and the boy says yes every time. He’s gritting his teeth together so tightly Cas can hear them grinding, and he wishes he could just push out his grace, heal Ben’s pain. Sam walks ahead of them, keeping an eye on the tree line closest to the river.  
  
When Wendell Perkins’ ghost barrels into them, none of them see him coming.  
  
One second Ben is leaning heavily against Cas as they do their awkward three-legged walk down the path, and in the next there’s a blast of cold air as the teenager is ripped out from under Cas’s arm. He hears an “Umf!” of pain and surprise that could have either come from Ben or Sam, and then Cas himself is on the ground.  
  
He leaps back up after a brief few moments of disorientation, his grace extending to heal any minor injuries. He can see Sam scrambling to his feet out of the corner of his eye. They scan the woods and the trail, and Sam shouts “Ben!” into the night.  
  
“Here!” a desperate, choked voice answers, only a few yards away, in the woods. Sam and Cas run.  
  
There’s a small clearing just off the path, and in it stands the ghost of Wendell Perkins, wielding a knife and standing over a trembling Ben Braeden. Perkins’ ghost looks feral, as ghosts are wont to do, grinning with broken teeth at Sam and Cas, stringy hair falling down from the cap pushed to just above his eyebrows. He twirls the knife in one hand. It might be immaterial, but Cas knows it can kill, just like the real thing.  
  
Sam aims his gun at Perkins, but it won’t do any good. The shotguns loaded with rock salt are still in the trunk of the Impala. None of them planned to be on the trail past sunset. They were all too worried about Ben to think this through, to act like the professionals they are.  
  
With a flick of his wrist, Cas materializes his angel blade. It won’t kill a ghost, but it should have the same effect as iron, at least theoretically. Perkins raises his knife, and Cas throws the blade at the apparition’s head. Thankfully, Perkins dissolves in a howl of pain and rage, and the angel blade sticks squarely in a tree behind him.  
  
“What the hell?!” Ben yells as Sam rushes forward to pull him up from the ground. Cas retrieves the blade, then quickly presses two fingers to Ben’s forehead. The boy is healed immediately. There’s no sense in any pretense now. “What.... What was that?! What did you just do to me?! What is happening?!”  
  
“We’ll explain later, run now!” Sam pushes Ben back toward the trail, and Cas follows close behind them, looking over his shoulder. He doesn’t know how far Perkins can roam from the river, but the ghost can obviously still reach them on the trail. They need to get out of the woods.  
  
Cas hears Lisa and Dean before he sees them, running down the path toward them. He hears Lisa’s relieved “Ben! You’re okay!” and Ben’s frightened, “Mom! We gotta get outta here!” Cas has just reached the group and locked eyes with Dean when Perkins flickers into being right behind him.  
  
“Dean!” Cas shouts, and Dean ducks just in time, pulling Lisa and Ben down with him as Perkins makes a wide, slicing arc through the air with the knife. Angered at being foiled, the ghost lunges forward, hissing Latin curses under his breath. Lisa rolls on top of Ben as Perkins tries to bring the knife down again, but Dean is up and surging toward him, falling through thin air as the ghost vanishes.  
  
Sam runs to the Braedens, helping to pull them up. Ben is hugging Lisa close to him, like he can protect her through contact alone, and she’s clinging back just as tightly. Dean pushes off the ground and turns toward Cas, eyes wide and frantic.  
  
“Cas, you gotta smite him!”  
  
It isn’t like Cas didn’t already know that, but he resists snapping “Duh!” back at Dean. Life and death situations are probably not the best to start arguments in, not that that’s ever stopped the two of them before.  
  
“He’s after Ben,” Sam says, and immediately Dean moves to stand close to Ben and Lisa. Cas moves toward them, too. If Perkins materializes next to the boy again, he has to be there to catch him.  
  
“It’s gonna be okay,” Dean whispers to the Braedens. He has his gun drawn now, not that it will do any good. “Cas’ll get him.”  
  
Lisa looks at Cas with wide, frightened eyes. She’s wound her arms around Ben’s back, pulling him close to her and protecting his head with her hands.  
  
“Mom,” Ben says in muffled protest from where she’s pulled him against her chest. “You gotta let go, you’re gonna get hurt! Let go!” Lisa just shakes her head and hugs him tighter, but Ben manages to pull away. He starts like he’s going to move down the trail, to keep his mother safe from the ghost after him, but then Dean reaches out to put a hand on Ben’s shoulder and stops him.  
  
“Just be still,” Dean says, scanning the woods with his eyes. He moves around to Lisa’s back while Cas steps forward to protect them from the front. Sam comes around to the side, so the Braedens are surrounded. “He’ll probably come back swinging, so if we say, ‘Duck,’ you better duck.”  
  
Now that everything is finally still, Cas can feel the crackle of energy, the chill in the air that signifies the ghost’s return.  
  
Before he can shout a warning, Perkins is there, ripping Sam away from their huddle. Dean shouts “Hey!” and the ghost briefly turns to him, eyes livid. Dean pushes the Braedens behind him as Perkins reaches out a hand toward Dean’s chest, and with the apparition distracted, Cas shoves his hand straight through Perkins’ head.  
  
He can faintly hear Dean yell “Get down!” as he pushes all the grace he can muster out of his body, channeling through his hand and into Perkins’ incorporeal form. The light is blinding, even to Cas, but he catches the scent of smoke, hears Perkins scream.  
  
Then the light recedes and Cas _hurts,_ a sharp, stabbing pain starting in his chest and pushing out. The grace. He wasn’t ready to use it like that, hasn’t healed enough from his possession. He starts to sink to the ground.  
  
This has happened before. After flying the Winchesters to 1978 while cut off from Heaven. In that warehouse where he tried to take on Crowley, right after escaping Purgatory. He can already feel the blood leaking from his nose, and he wonders, _How bad will this time be?_  
  
There’s a constant to these episodes, and that’s Dean Winchester, at his side, grabbing Cas and holding him up. This time he’s there before Cas can hit the ground.  
  
Cas can see Dean’s face, the concern and the fear, before it’s replaced with one of those flashes, a brief glimpse of Dean, _that same face, but beaten bloody, bruised, his hand on Cas’s face anyway_ and Cas briefly tries to jerk away, thinks _I can’t hurt him again_ but Dean just grips his shoulder tighter, and there’s that hand on his face again, another moving from his shoulder, curling around the back of his neck and into his hair. Dean is saying “Cas, Cas, look at me, focus on me. It’s okay, you’re okay. Just look at me.”  
  
And because Cas always does what Dean asks of him, he focuses in on that lovely face.  
  
“Dean?” he murmurs.  
  
“Yeah Cas?” Dean says, and in the background Cas can see the Braedens and Sam looking on, their worried frowns melting into a blur.  
  
“You have lovely eyes,” Cas says, and then he passes out.

///

“I shouldn’t have asked him to do that.”  
  
Dean is pacing along the side of the Impala. They’ve stowed Cas in the back seat. He’s still breathing regularly, so Dean thinks this is just an issue of Cas’s grace needing to recharge, but that doesn’t mean he’s freaking out any less. He keeps working his hand into his jacket pocket, twisting it around that black feather like it’s going to bring him luck, bring Cas back to the waking world safe and sound.  
  
Lisa, Ben and Sam are watching him pace. Ben has his arm around Lisa, still looking a little shell-shocked. Lisa leans into her son like she has to touch him to make sure he’s okay.  
  
Sam had explained to the kid on the way back to the car that monsters are real and that their job is to hunt them. Lisa had simply affirmed that they’d already told her the truth behind the FBI ruse. She didn’t mention the mind-wiping, which Dean took to mean she’s sticking to the original plan. Ben isn’t going to find out who Dean really is.  
  
It would probably hurt to even look at the kid if Dean hadn’t spent the past thirty minutes consumed with fretting over Cas, who he and Sam had to jointly carry all the way to the parking lot. The guy is heavier than he looks under all those ill-fitting suits he normally wears. Thankfully it’s dark enough that no one was around to see them move Cas’s unconscious body into the backseat, but Sam is still worried the real feds will be right on their tails. Dean can tell by the way Sam keeps glancing toward the road that he wants to leave. He should be worried about that, too, but he can’t manage it right now.  
  
Dean just wants to be sure Cas is okay first, then they can say their goodbyes to the Braedens and all go their separate ways. He’s already nearly gotten Cas killed tonight. He’s not planning to stick around and bring more bad luck down on Lisa and Ben.  
  
“Dean,” Sam says for the hundredth time. “This has happened before. He’s going to be fine. You need to relax.”  
  
“I can’t believe that’s an angel,” Ben says. “He just looks like a regular guy. An angel guy saved me.”  
  
After the initial panic, the kid is honestly taking the news of the supernatural world remarkably well. Damn if the Braedens aren’t hardy people.  
  
“Still, I just — I knew he wasn’t ready, and I asked him to smite Perkins. I shouldn’t have done that.” Dean's not quite ready to join the conversation around him just yet.  
  
“Dean,” Sam says again, with infinite patience that is clearly beginning to wear thin. “How else were we going to get rid of him?”  
  
“I don’t know, actually look in the river for the damn body? We didn’t even try!”  
  
“I don’t think that would have worked,” Lisa says quietly, but Dean doesn’t respond to her because he hears a groan from the Impala, and then he’s leaning in through the open door immediately.  
  
“Cas?” he asks, relieved to be greeted by the sight of his friend sitting up, groggily rubbing at his temples. “Christ, Cas, you scared me. Are you okay?”  
  
Cas squints at him, tilting his head.  
  
“I have a headache like I’ve been trapped in a car listening to Crowley talk about his mother for five hours, but I think I’ll survive.”  
  
Damn, Dean thinks, flooded with a sudden burst of joy, _I fucking love this snarky little bastard._ He reaches up to squeeze Cas’s knee affectionately.  
  
“We can work with that. We’re gonna get you to a motel, somewhere away from the feds, let you rest, okay?”  
  
Cas drops back onto the seat rather dramatically.  
  
“That’s fine. But if you could possibly not play your music loud enough to wake the dead on the way there, that would be wonderful.”  
  
Dean’s so happy that Cas is all right he doesn’t even bother to let his smile drop at that insult to his tunes. He just hits Cas’s foot lightly with his hand and says, “Asshole,” all fondness.  
  
Cas doesn’t respond, having already closed his eyes to sleep. Dean leans back out of the car and turns to face the Braedens and Sam.  
  
His brother is shaking his head, this weird grin on his face.  
  
“What?” Dean demands.  
  
“Nothing,” Sam says. “Just — nothing.”  
  
Sam holds a hand out to Lisa, who moves out from under Ben’s shoulder to shake it hesitantly.  
  
“It was nice to meet you, Ms. Braeden,” Sam says, and Lisa nods.  
  
“You too.”  
  
Sam shakes Ben’s hand, too, then walks to the Impala to gather the evidence against Perkins to put in the hatchback, in hopes the feds will find it and let Jeffords go. He catches Dean’s eye as he walks away and jerks his head toward Lisa and Ben, an obvious hint.  
  
Dean walks over to the Braedens, feeling his heart pound with a completely different fear than the one he felt when they were carrying Cas back to the car. This is it. This is likely the last time he’ll ever see them, and he has no clue what to say.  
  
Lisa is watching him with that sad look on her face, the one that reminds him of sitting on the stairs at Bobby’s, trying to think of a way to make their relationship work and failing to come up with a suitable plan. They were always doomed, Dean and Lisa. But in so many ways, ways she won’t ever remember, she and Ben saved his life. Without them, with Sam and Cas both gone, Dean knows he would have taken a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. There’s no other way around it. This night is not enough to repay them for the year in which they took him in, sheltered and loved him, and he knows it. There’s nothing Dean can say, especially when Ben doesn’t even know who he is, no way that he can possibly thank them enough.  
  
“Agent Harry,” Ben says, before Dean or Lisa can speak. “I just want to say thanks for saving me. And please tell the other guys thanks, too, especially Cas. I mean, if you guys hadn’t been there...” He looks away for a beat, as if seeing the worst possible outcome, but then his eyes are right back on Dean. For a second Dean can see him as the little kid he rescued from changelings, scared but determined not to be. “I just... This is a lot to process, but I’m really grateful.”  
  
Ben pulls Lisa back in to his side with one arm, and she smiles faintly at Dean as Ben reaches his other hand out.  
  
Dean hesitates, then shakes it. He wants to tell Ben, “This is not the first time you’ve been in this kind of situation, and every time you’ve tried to protect others first.” Wants to tell Ben how smart and funny and brave he’s always been, how Dean has never forgotten him and will always have a soft spot in his heart for him. But he can’t.  
  
“You seem like a good kid,” Dean says instead. “My advice, for what it’s worth — don’t go looking for this stuff. Go to school, get a real job.” Dean smiles mirthlessly. “Killing ghosts and ghouls doesn’t pay real well.”  
  
Ben blinks at Dean, like he’s not sure what to make of that.  
  
“Come on kid, promise me,” Dean says, and he tries not to let his voice crack. “That’s all that I ask for saving your life, is that you lead a good one.”  
  
“Okay,” Ben says finally, still looking a little unsure, but at least he’s agreeing. “That’s fair.”  
  
“Ben,” Lisa says gently, squeezing him before stepping out from under his arm. “Can you go wait in the car? I’d like to speak to Agent Harry for a minute.”  
  
“Yeah, sure Mom.” Ben kisses her on the cheek, then looks back at Dean. “Thanks again.”  
  
Dean doesn’t really trust himself to speak around the lump that’s forming in his throat, so he just nods.  
  
Once Ben is in the Durango, Lisa turns to Dean and says, “I know this is like déjà vu for you, but I’ve never been in this position before. I don’t really know what to say other than thank you. You kept him safe.”  
  
Dean shrugs.  
  
“So did you,” he says, and damn, his voice sounds terrible. Too many emotions in one night have made his throat all tight. “You always have.”  
  
Unexpectedly Lisa surges forward and kisses him on the forehead. Dean’s mind throws up a completely blank wall for a second.  
  
“What was that —”  
  
“Just, thank you.” Lisa is smiling now, a real smile. She squeezes his shoulder once, then starts to walk back to her car. She only makes it a few feet before turning back to Dean again.  
  
“Hey!” she calls. Dean cocks his head at her, questioning. “You know what you can do to make it up to me?”  
  
“Um, I kind of figured if tonight hadn’t already done that, nothing would.”  
  
She laughs. It’s a nice sound. He’s kind of missed it being directed at him.  
  
“Take your own advice, Dean.”  
  
Now he’s even more confused.  
  
“What advice?”  
  
Lisa points toward the back seat of the Impala.  
“Lead a good life.” She smiles again, and it’s a little bittersweet this time. “I have a feeling you know where to start.”  
  
And that was something Dean never thought he’d hear, ever — his ex-girlfriend telling him to go after Cas. He can’t help it, he laughs at the sheer absurdity of the situation, but it’s a happy feeling. It’s sort of freeing, actually.  
  
She’s walking away from him now, and Dean doesn’t feel the loss at quite the magnitude he expected to. The Braedens are okay. Ben will go to school, be a badass engineer. Lisa will figure out how to thrive without her son by her side, running that gym like a boss and probably being the coolest person in all of Michigan. They’ll live, because Dean helped save them. He’s not going to dwell on the negatives, for once. He’s just going to let this feel good.  
  
He turns back to the car, back to his own life, back to Sam and his Baby and hunting. Back to Cas.

///

Sam gets two room keys, because he’s a little shit.  
  
He shoves one into the hands of a very sleepy Cas, who doesn’t seem to even notice the silent freak-out Dean is having as he stares at the other key Sam’s still holding. Cas walks to the room like a zombie, not even bothering to get his bag. He probably expects Dean to grab it for him.  
  
“Sam,” Dean hisses when Cas is out of earshot. “What the hell, man?”  
  
Sam just rolls his eyes.  
  
“We’re not doing this. I’m not faking this with you, not anymore. You go in there, and you tell him you love him and get rid of all this weirdly tense bullshit. I saw it, Lisa saw it, Ben probably saw it. It’s so damn obvious, Dean. And if you think he doesn’t feel the same way, you’re an idiot. You’re both idiots, actually, and I’m done with it.”  
  
Dean stares at Sam in shock. His brother sports a version of the bitch face Dean hasn’t seen before. It must be the I Cannot Deal With Dean and Cas’s Sexual Tension Any Longer face.  
  
“That was... That was quite the outburst, Sammy.”  
  
Sam sighs, frustrated.  
  
“Just — listen to me. Neither of us are any good at holding on to anything other than each other. It’s been just you and me versus the world for so long, we don’t know how to do anything else. No relationship I’ve ever had has survived this job, this life, and neither have any of yours. Ben and Lisa are proof of that.”  
  
Dean winces.  
  
“But Dean,” Sam presses on, “you’ve managed to hold on to Cas anyway, through everything. He’s become, I don’t know... integral. To both of us, but especially to you. He’s here, and he’s here for you. Don’t you think that’s significant?”  
  
And it is. It is significant. Cas has always been there, from that day he burst into that barn and turned Dean’s worldview upside down till now. Even when Dean was sure he was gone forever, even when Cas showed up late, he’s always come back. To Dean. And Dean has always waited for him.  
  
Sam is still going on and on, saying something about how he doesn’t want to hold Dean back from forming other relationships anymore and how Cas is awesome, but Dean already has that part figured out.  
  
Dean loves him, and now Cas needs to know it.  
  
“A hunter, remember?” Sam asks, because he hasn’t noticed the resolution Dean’s silently arrived at. “Someone who understands the life?”  
  
Dean doesn’t say anything to Sam, he just claps his brother on the shoulder and runs for the room, like the leading male role from some rom-com bullshit movie that he always makes fun of but secretly loves.  
  
“Go get him!” Sam calls from behind him. “Finally!”  
  
Dean bursts through the door, which was maybe not such a great plan because it startles Cas, who wakes up with a jump.  
  
“What is —” Cas sleepily looks at Dean, still standing in the open doorway and probably, definitely grinning like a madman. “Oh, Dean. Are you all right?”  
  
And because Dean has always been better with actions than words, he makes himself cross the floor to Cas’s bed, leaning down to kiss him before he can talk himself out of it.  
  
Cas makes a soft, startled sound in the back of his throat, but then his hand comes around to hold the back of Dean’s head and he’s kissing Dean back with a vengeance, and _fuck,_ Dean thought Cas was going to be all awkward and inexperienced but he’s moving his lips with so much enthusiasm Dean’s not even sure if it’s sloppy or not.  
  
It feels good to kiss Cas, so damn good. Those lips are as soft as Dean always imagined they were, and before he can really think about it, Dean’s leaning even further into Cas’s space, pressing him back into the bed. Cas just goes with it, like he always does, following Dean once more unto the breach.  
  
_We should probably talk about this,_ Dean thinks, but his hands are already pulling at Cas’s suit jacket, and then Cas is shrugging out of it and throwing it across the room, moving further onto the bed and dragging Dean with him.  
  
_You need to tell him you love him,_ Dean thinks, but then Cas is working Dean out of his own jacket, and then his shirt. Dean, not to be beat, attacks the buttons on Cas’s shirt like they’ve personally insulted him, popping a few right off and ripping his tie off none too carefully along the way.  
  
_There are things that need to be cleared up here,_ Dean thinks, but he’s in between Cas's legs, kneeling over Cas and pulling at his belt, and Cas is staring up at Dean, wide-eyed and wondrous, and Dean doesn’t even know where to begin.  
  
He surges forward to kiss Cas again just as he finally gets the belt out of the way, and again Cas makes that startled sound. Like he can’t believe this is happening. It makes Dean rock back on his heels, and this time Cas doesn’t try to follow him, just stares at Dean with his head cocked adorably, his hair all mussed and sticking straight up in places.  
  
“Cas, I —“ Dean’s a little out of breath and also terrified.  
  
“Dean?” And now Cas sounds worried, and Dean just won’t have that.  
  
“It’s you!” he blurts, because he can’t quite manage the “I love you,” not just yet. “I mean, for me, it’s you. Not Lisa. I didn’t want Lisa back, don’t want Lisa back. I didn’t want her to be with you. I’m sorry if I was a dick. I was afraid I’d lose you. And I don’t want to lose you, ever again.”  
  
“Dean,” Cas repeats, and this time he sounds awed.  
  
“I just, I meant to do this right, but I’m not good at talking about this stuff. I figured if we’re going to do this —" He gestures between them. “— I need to tell you that you’re my choice. For my family, and for the one I want with me. You’re the one I want. Fuck, that was cheesy. But uh, you know what I mean. I’d pick you over Lisa, Cas. I’d pick you over anybody.”  
  
Cas is breathing heavily now, too. Dean watches his chest rise and fall and tries not to feel completely panicked, like he’s jumped out of a plane with no parachute (or like he just got on a plane in the first place).  
  
“I thought you were jealous of me, mad at me,” Cas says finally. “I thought you still loved her. I was trying to get out of the way.”  
  
Dean can’t help but laugh a little at that.  
  
“No, I thought you wanted to date her! I was trying to get out of your way!”  
  
Cas laughs, too, and Dean loves it. It’s such a nice sound, such a nice look, to see Cas light up like that.  
  
“Cas,” Dean says, and he grabs his angel’s face with both hands, slightly stunned that this all is actually happening. “I only ever wanted parts of my life with them, with Ben and Lisa. There was always that pull, back to hunting, back to the road. With you, you’re right there. Even when you’re not, you come back when I need you. I just should probably have mentioned before that I need you all the time. That I want everything with you.”  
  
Like the most lovely broken record, Cas says, “Dean” again in that wonderful voice, and Dean kisses him hard.  
  
If they don’t talk much after that, that’s okay. _We’ve got time in the future,_ Dean figures.  
  
He makes quick work of divesting Cas of his pants, and Cas, clearly frustrated at being the most undressed, pushes Dean over onto the bed and pulls his pants off before Dean can even get a good look at Cas in his boxers.  
  
Then Cas is on top of him, pressing him down into the cheap motel sheets, and Dean arches against him, greedy for more contact. And _yup, there it is, that’s Cas’s dick,_ rubbing right against Dean’s through their underwear. Dean groans, and Cas follows his lead on that, too. It’s a fucking beautiful sound.  
  
Dean’s been keyed up for this for days now (or actually years, if he’s being totally honest with himself), and he’s not sure how long he’s going to last with Cas, mostly naked and completely gorgeous, thrusting against him and alternating kisses between Dean’s neck and cheeks and lips.  
  
“Cas,” Dean says, running his hands along Cas’s sides and then over his back, digging his nails in slightly and scratching down, at which point Cas makes the most beautiful sound. “Hey...”  
  
Cas doesn’t pull back, just keeps rolling his hips, mutters “What, Dean?” into Dean’s neck.  
  
“I’m —“ Dean starts at a particularly good slide of Cas’s dick against his own, groans. _Oh yeah,_ they’re both definitely wet and incredibly hard, and Dean hasn’t even seen Cas with no clothing yet. That can’t be right. “This, uh —" Cas is sucking a hickey onto his neck and pressing his hips down hard into Dean, just holding them both there “— JESUS, FUCK, OKAY, okay, this might end early if you don’t stop.”  
  
Cas leans up for a second, looks Dean right in the eyes and says, “I’m not stopping.” Then he shoves his hand into Dean’s boxers and _yup,_ that Cas’s hand right on Dean’s dick, a little sweaty and a lot hot-as-hell when Cas starts stroking, sure and steady, and Dean can’t help but come right then and there with a very undignified yelp of surprise.  
  
Cas kind of laughs at that, but Dean repays him in kind as soon as he catches his breath again, pressing the heel of his hand on Cas’s dick through his boxers and then dragging it up sharply. Cas, inexperienced as he is, apparently doesn’t need much more stimulation than that, because then he’s coming too, eyes squeezed shut, mouth falling open, head back.  
  
So that’s what Cas looks like during an orgasm, or at least during this particular orgasm. Dean decides he’s going to need more data to decide whether “fucking gorgeous” or “so sexy, oh god” is the better descriptor for Cas’s O-face.  
  
“Fuck,” Dean whispers once Cas has collapsed forward onto his chest. “Wow.”  
  
“Fuck indeed,” Cas mutters into Dean’s shoulder. He rolls over slightly, still leaving half his body draped over Dean’s.  
  
“That, uh.... So that happened.”  
  
Cas lets out a huffing laugh, and Dean loves how he can feel it through every place where Cas’s body is pressed to his.  
  
“You’re very articulate, Dean.”  
  
“Hey, shut your mouth. I can be damn romantic, just give me a second. My brain needs to catch up to some things.”  
  
Dean rearranges them a bit, pulling Cas up to rest on his shoulder, tucked under his chin so he can kiss the top of Cas’s head. Dean takes a deep, steadying breath. _Now or never, Winchester. You can do this. You have to do this. He needs to hear it to understand it._  
  
“I love you,” Dean says, before he can think too much about it.  
  
Dean can feel Cas tense, but he can’t see his face, and for a moment he’s sure that that’s it, he’s ruined it. _Cas just wanted sex. He doesn’t want your love._ Cas will leave him again, this time for good.  
  
But then —  
  
“I love you, too,” Cas says quietly, and Dean feels the panic drain from his body, replaced by the greatest relief and joy he’s felt in a long time, maybe ever. “I’ve loved you for years.”  
  
Dean doesn’t really believe in that “your heart skips a beat” thing, but if he did, he would be willing to bet the weird twist in his chest is just that. _For years._ It doesn’t seem possible, after all Dean’s done to Cas, dragging him down to the mud and the muck of humanity, pretty much talking him out of his home, out of Heaven. And yet Cas just said it.  
  
It hits Dean that Cas has probably wanted to stay with him for almost as long as they’ve known each other. He just didn’t know Dean wanted the same thing.  
  
_I’ve loved you for years._  
  
Dean leans up a little, intending to look Cas in the eyes properly and respond. He wants to ask Cas so many things, like “Since when?” and “How did you know you loved me?” or “Why did we both wait so fucking long?” But then something in the corner of the room catches his attention, and he flops right back down.  
  
“Fuck,” he says.  
  
Cas sits up, worried, touching Dean’s face with concern.  
  
“Dean, what’s wrong?”  
  
Dean groans and points away from the bed.  
  
“I left the goddamn door open.”

///

In the morning there’s another round, this time with no clothes and no open door. Cas enjoys it even more than he enjoyed the night before, but he’s not surprised at that. Everything with Dean just gets better as they go.  
  
When Dean steps into the shower, Cas pulls out Lisa’s business card.  
  
“Thank you — Cas,” he texts to the cell number on the front.  
  
He doesn’t really expect a response, but he gets one a few minutes later, a “You’re most welcome ;)” that eases some of the tension he’d been feeling. When he’d pulled Lisa aside and told her why he felt like she should be with Dean, she’d looked so disappointed. When she’d said, “That’s not what I want. It’s not what he wants, and I don’t think that’s what you really want. What do you want, Cas?” Cas hadn’t known how to respond.  
  
“Who do you really want to be with here? It isn’t me, is it?” she’d pressed, still gentle and kind in her questioning. Of course Cas knew the true answer to that question, but he didn’t think it was the correct one, so he didn’t say anything.  
  
Lisa just shook her head with a small, strange smile.  
  
“You guys, both trying to push me different ways. Don’t think I haven’t seen it. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how miserable you both are when you’re trying to talk the other one up. Dean looks so dejected every time you talk to me, and you look the same when it’s the other way around. He threw himself under the bus when it came to the memory thing, over and over, trying his hardest to spare you guilt every time. Yet here you stand, saying he’s the best man you know and trying to blame yourself for what happened to Ben and me. So Cas, I think that the answer to all this is that — well, it’s so obvious if you’re looking for it. Even obvious if you don’t want to see it, which I didn’t for the longest time. So just think about it — who do you really want?”  
  
Cas thought she must have been mistaken. Dean wanted Lisa, of course he did, he had to. But it turns out Cas is the one who was wrong, and it’s the first time he can recall truly enjoying that feeling.  
  
Later, when they’re packing their bags, retrieved from the Impala after their unintentionally public escapade, Dean pulls something out of his jacket pocket.  
  
“Hey,” he says, somewhat shyly. “I found this out in the woods that first day we were looking around. It kind of reminded me of you.”  
  
He holds a black feather out to Cas. It’s slightly bent from being in Dean’s pocket, the barbs ruffled and out of place. Cas takes it from him and turns it over in his hands.  
  
“You’ve just been carrying this around?”  
  
Dean shuffles a little sheepishly.  
  
“Yeah, I dunno. Sam said it was stupid. But I felt like holding on to it. It’s, uh, it’s cool looking. I don’t know why I didn’t just give it to you when I first found it.”  
  
Cas runs his fingers through the broken barbs and smiles.  
  
“The bird might miss it.”  
  
Dean laughs.  
  
“I doubt it. You don’t have to keep it. But I will say, I kept grabbing on to it last night when I was most worried about you, and it kind of made me feel better. Maybe it’s good luck.”  
  
“Thank you, Dean,” Cas says, and he means it. “I’d like to keep it. Not for luck, though. Just because it’s a gift from you.”  
  
He smiles up at Dean, glad to be rewarded with an answering grin.  
  
“Maybe,” Dean says, “it might help to hold on to it when you get those panic attacks?”  
  
Cas stiffens slightly. He hadn’t wanted Dean to know about those, let alone have two right in front of him.  
  
“Hey,” Dean says, and then he’s right there, wrapping his arms around Cas slowly, like he’s giving Cas an out, a way to step back. Cas doesn’t. Now that he knows what it feels like to be really held by Dean, he wants the warmth of these arms around him again and again. “I’ve had them, too, man. All the fucking time right after Hell. And a few other situations.” He doesn’t say Purgatory, but Cas knows.  
  
“They don’t just go away. But it’s okay. I know now, so please, just let me help however I can. Even if all I can give you is a stupid good luck feather. And sex. Sex could be the cure for everything, now that I think about it.”  
  
Cas hugs Dean back tightly, feels Dean relax into it, his head falling onto Cas’s shoulder. The way Dean shows love best is by taking care of people, Cas knows. He’s willing to let Dean love him like that. And in return, Cas will keep loving him with his words, because even in the short time they’ve spent together with nothing left unsaid between them, he’s seen how well Dean responds to being told what he means to Cas.  
  
“I love you,” he says, kissing the side of Dean’s neck that he can reach while they’re still wound around one another. “I love you.”  
  
They’re strange words to come out of an angel’s mouth, but Cas does love Dean. He has for so long he can’t recall when it began, what day it was that he looked at Dean Winchester and saw more than a tool of Heaven, more than the Righteous Man. Dean has just been _Dean_ to Cas for so long — infuriating, reckless, stubborn, caring, determined, loyal, smart, loving Dean, who’s laughing into his shoulder right now.  
  
“This must be higher love, right? Right?”  
  
Cas rolls his eyes and breaks the hug to glare at Dean, who’s grinning smugly.  
  
“Unbelievable. You can quote Steve Winwood to me, but I can’t even bring up JoJo?”  
  
Dean makes an exaggerated affronted face.  
  
“Okay, first rule of being with me — you never, ever compare any 2000s pop-tart to Winwood. He played with Clapton, man. Clapton.”  
  
“JoJo toured with Joe Jonas.”  
  
“Oh, for fuck’s — No. You don’t mean any of this. You know how I feel about this. I’m not letting our first fight be over friggin’ JoJo.”  
  
“This wouldn’t be our first fight,” Cas points out. “And she’s recently experienced a revival, Dean.”  
  
“She — How do you even know that? That wasn’t included in the Metatron Pop Culture Special!”  
  
Cas grins. It’s not something he does much, but he can see himself doing it more often now.  
  
“Maybe I’m a fan.”  
  
“You’re not.”  
  
“I think I am, actually.”  
  
He turns back to the bed to continue packing, proud of the way he’s left Dean sputtering behind him.  
  
“Cas, I will withhold sex, I swear!”  
  
Cas hums in agreement while he gently wraps the feather in the trench coat at the top of his bag.  
  
“You do that. It would be very hypocritical of you, though.”  
  
He can hear Dean rooting around the room for last night’s discarded clothes and tossing them into his duffel carelessly.  
  
“And why’s that?”  
  
“Taylor Swift.”  
  
A beat of silence, and then, “Fuck you, Sam.”  
  
Cas zips his bag and turns back to Dean, who’s searching for something on the floor, the tips of his ears reddening.  
  
“You couldn’t withhold sex from me anyway,” Cas says with surety. “You enjoy it too much.”  
  
Dean triumphantly holds up his underwear, just dragged out from under the other bed, and looks straight at Cas.  
  
“Cocky,” he says, but there’s fondness behind it. “And unfortunately,” Dean adds, standing up and shoving the boxers into his duffle, “very right.”  
  
Dean hasn’t managed to get his bag zipped before Cas moves over to him and grabs his face in both hands, kissing him hard. Dean doesn’t fight it, just smoothes his hands up over Cas’s back, licking into his mouth to deepen the kiss.  
  
When Dean pulls away first, Cas tries to chase after him, but Dean puts his palms on either side of Cas’s face, stopping him.  
  
“Hey,” Dean says. “I mean it, you know.”  
  
“Mean what?” Cas asks, mainly hoping that they get back to the kissing before they have to meet Sam and drive back to Kansas. Back home.  
  
“I’m here for you. For good this time. I’m not gonna let you down again.”  
  
“Dean, you haven’t —“  
  
“Yeah, I have,” Dean says. “But Cas, if we’re gonna do this, we’re doing it together, okay? For me, that means I’m going to watch out for you more. And when you’re in trouble, you’ve got to let me know, man.”  
  
Cas is touched but also slightly concerned.  
  
“I will. If you promise me you won’t blame yourself for everything bad that happens to me.”  
  
Dean opens his mouth like he plans to protest, then closes it sharply, likely realizing there’s no way to deny it.  
  
“Dean, not everything terrible in this world is your fault,” Cas says gently. “Everything good in my life has been because of you. I didn’t know anything about free will or friendship or love until I met you. I just thought I knew.”  
  
“You were a kind of a know-it-all buzz kill,” Dean says, smirking as he pulls Cas closer by his belt loops. “'Dean,’ he mocks in an imitation of Cas’s voice, ‘I cannot waste my time on women of the night, this is a den of iniquity!’”  
  
“I didn’t say it like that,” Cas protests, but he allows Dean to kiss him. “And maybe I didn’t want that sex worker.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve always wanted me.”  
  
“I have,” Cas says, honestly, right as Dean moves forward to kiss his neck. Dean pauses, lips hovering so close to Cas’s skin he feels Dean’s breath, hot and right above his shirt collar. “I wanted you during the apocalypse, but I felt like something was wrong with me as an angel to desire a human. I wanted you the whole year you were with Lisa, the times we fought after, in Purgatory, when I was human. Especially when I was human. I think that’s when I realized exactly how much you mean to me. That what I really wanted was more, more of you.” Dean hasn’t moved, quietly breathing against Cas’s neck. “I wanted you with the Mark and without. Before I said yes to Lucifer, during, after. I wanted you so much, even when I thought you wanted Lisa instead.”  
  
Cas feels Dean’s lips press against neck once, twice. Then Dean leans his head against Cas’s shoulder and mutters, “Damn, Cas. I had no fucking clue.”  
  
“I didn’t know it was possible. For you to feel the same.”  
  
Then Dean wraps his arms around him, and Cas feels safe. It’s ridiculous, because he’s still an angel, albeit a weak one, and it’s been his mission since they met to protect Dean, to put Dean first, to let Dean go for the greater good, even when it broke his own heart. But in this moment he’s found a new mission — make Dean happy. Make him feel loved.  
  
“Will you stay?” Dean asks, still hugging Cas, and he knows Dean doesn’t mean here in this hotel room but anywhere he goes. And Cas thinks, _finally._  
  
Aloud he says, “Of course.”  
  
_I don’t have to miss him anymore,_ Cas thinks as Dean squeezes him tightly and then moves away, back to packing in a more organized manner, with a smile on his face like Cas has never seen before but is already longing to see again. _I get to be what’s best for him. I don’t have to be jealous or alone. I get to be the one who stays._  
  
Cas thinks of a black feather, carried with him in mind. Of worried hands, gently holding his face, holding him up. Of thousands of prayers, earnest and longing. Of phone calls and confessions, truths just for him to hear. Of a coat, carefully carried and folded, to be handed back to him at just the right time. Of forgiveness, so often necessary and always given. He thinks of that small smile on Dean’s face, growing larger still as he sings “Higher Love” under his breath, off-key and content.  
  
So many years, so many actions and words that added up to this. Cas had no clue, either. Maybe he should have known. Maybe they both should have known. But now that he does know, he thinks one thing over and over as he looks at Dean.  
  
_I get to be the one he loves._

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far you have my eternal love and graditude. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Please, please check out the gorgeous artwork shinychimera made for this story. The link is right below. Leave them some love.
> 
> Also, I'm on tumblr now as [ellis-park](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ellis-park). Disclaimer: I literally just started and have no blogging ~skills~ but I'm always willing to talk about this stupid ship.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Angel on the Hood of a Car (Art)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9822038) by [shinychimera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera)




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